Better Offers
by jenni3penny
Summary: Post 'Yankee White' AU, KIBBS. First in the 'Better Offers' series. "Say it or don't, Todd. Because this could go on all day."


"Special Agent Gibbs does return his calls. In just over three hours, even."

She didn't even play at being innocent as to who was calling.

Just steam-rolled any attempt he coulda made at being charming too. Wise ass.

"You left me a message, Agent Todd." He sacked his shoulders back hard into his chair, the smirk that her voicemail had drawn up over his lips slackening a little as he dropped his head back tiredly.

"It's just Kate." She corrected easily, tone even and casual. "Resignation, remember?"

"Yeah, I do." He murmured, keeping his head driven back into the break of the chair so that he could stretch out his tightly-wired neck. "Gave you a pretty solid solution to that problem if I remember correctly."

"Gibbs…" This was an apology without an apology – and he knew it was coming. "I got another offer."

Yeah, that's exactly what he'd been afraid of – especially when it had been a few days since they'd last spoken and he still hadn't heard a word from her nor a whisper from upstairs. He'd fast tracked her paperwork to Morrow's office and there'd suddenly been an end of some sort, made out of complete silence. She hadn't followed up and Morrow hadn't been in much of a mood to discuss it. The Director had been well trapped up in MTAC for the last two days and… frankly, he'd figured he'd already lost her interest. To another offer.

Gibbs nodded slowly as he clipped his chair into a half turn, avoiding DiNozzo's less than surreptitious glancing, "A better offer."

He mentally banked the list of government agencies that could have easily picked her up in the between days, from her resignation until he'd found a message on his desk written in green pen. Who the hell in his office used green ink?

"I didn't say that." Her voice perked a little defensive over the line and he smirked into how sharply it came off her, could see the pursing of her lips and the minute shake of her head. The fractioned slink of her pretty eyes getting thinner in annoyance.

"You're not gonna hurt my feelings, Kate." He slanted his shoulders into a lazy shrugging, letting his weight bank back into the swivel chair. "If it's a better offer then just say so."

"It's better." She breathed the admission over the line, kept it quiet and nearing apologetic in its tone. "Higher pay grade."

"You mean higher security clearance." Gibbs corrected quickly, letting his jaw lead the angling of his head as he used the toe of his shoe pressed on his desk to wedge the chair back and forth a little.

"Damn near rivals yours, I think."

Of course. Because _that_ would draw her in. Not the money. Not necessarily recognition or accolade. Not a specific agency. Higher responsibility, more pressure, more danger, more weight. She needed to prove it. Needed to prove something. It was sorta cute, when it wasn't sorta annoying. She was motivated, ambitious. Had legitimate potential.

And, all in all, he had no doubt it was what she wanted. "You should take it."

"I know." Her voice culled quieter into his sincerity. "I think I'm going to."

"Don't need my permission."

And she laughed – full throated and obviously bemused. "I'm well aware of that, Agent Gibbs."

He was still leaning back relaxed into the sound of her laughter.

"So this is a courtesy call? Thanks for the offer but…" he trailed off into softness, letting the silence go laying long between them.

"I suppose it is." She agreed with a swaying that seemed almost too obvious in its sadness, as though she was playing and plying him longer on the phone.

"That all?" He intentionally let a smile tease itself through the words, keeping them from seeming in any way aggressive.

"Is it?" Still a throaty hum of humor in her voice, sorta sexy, still controlled.

She was lulling him, keeping him keeled even and low, drawing on him. She would have made an exceptional interrogator if given the chance and the training. If she'd take the chance. He was pretty damn sure she'd already made her decision, though, and there wasn't much chance of tugging her backwards.

"Say it or don't, Todd." Gibbs chipped back into a playful quietness, feeling a smirk crease his lips as he banked his jaw lower toward his chest and the phone tighter to his ear. "Because this could go on all day."

"You realize you're impossible, don't you?" Even amused impatience sounded sexy when she was using that flickering tone, the one that went a little sharp on the edge of things.

"So I've been told. Often." He slanted back nearly as sharply, keeping a balance to her as he caught the shift of DiNozzo's movement behind him, intentionally banking himself farther around. "Are we having dinner or aren't we?"

Execute Plan B. Lull her back. Interrogate over wine.

Hunt down the thieving conniving bastard that got to her in the interim.

White, maybe. She seemed like a white wine sorta girl.

"I'd like that."

Really? Well, goddamn…

"So would I." He answered quickly, bending the phone between his shoulder and ear as he started a turn back toward his desk, flinching a half glare into the way Tony was rifling through the nearest file cabinet for not a damn thing. "Can't tonight. I'm on a case."

"Booked today anyhow." She suddenly sounded tired or worn thin, the haziness of it making her voice quieter over the line – he was surprised to realize he wanted to know exactly why. "Call me when you're done with this one?"

"Sure."

A noise of huffed amusement bounced more energetically back to him, "Will you really?"

"Called you back this time, didn't I?" He wedged the phone tighter to his shoulder, using his foot to lever himself back into facing his desk.

"You thought it was about work."

"I didn't care what it was about." His eyes followed the way Tony cast him back a perked glance of amusement before slacking back in his own chair and flicking open a folder to peruse. "I'll call."

"Get back to work then." She ordered at him curtly. "Hurry up."

"I'll talk to you soon, Caitlin."

"Okay." And still that sweet little valve of humored pleasure in her voice.

Mental note to use the entire first name more often.

He could almost see her eyes slim down at the use of it.

Gibbs swallowed hard with a lift to his jaw, the movement made before the realization that she couldn't see it could sink in, "Kate, wait."

"Yeah?"

"You gonna tell me who stole you away from me?" He teased it at her, intentionally played the smile through his voice. "Tell me it wasn't Fornell."

"Nobody yet, Gibbs." There was laughter in her voice again, something nearly incapable of deceit. "That's why we're having dinner."

"No, we're having dinner because I wanna see you again." The lazily made lift of Tony's head went ignored as he wedged his elbow onto the desk, prying the phone back into the center of his palm. "And somebody stole you right out from under me."

"Can't let that go, can you?" She was nearly laughing into the comment. "You'll still see me."

"I'm working now." He blinked confusion as he picked up the flicker of green he'd caught sight of, assuming the bobbly headed alien pen belonged to Abby. "I'm hanging up."

"See ya, Gibbs." He could hear a smile in her voice and he hung up before he lost the sound of it to an empty line.

* * *

"So," Tony's lips were pursed up slightly, his head angled as he stared over the pattern the blood pool was making in a tracked and foot worn beige carpet, "no Special Agent Secret Service?"

Gibbs kept his focus on the scene, intentionally avoiding the way DiNozzo had turned his way, "You disappointed, DiNozzo?"

"Yeah, kinda. She's feisty." The younger man was already pulling the camera back from the bag he had slung off to the right side of his back. "What exactly did you offer her?"

He finally swung a flat faced glance toward the other man, "Excuse me?"

"I mean, what sort of… it doesn't matter how I say this, it's not gonna come out well."

"Ya think?" Gibbs asked into the room as he rolled his glance back over the carpet, stepping forward carefully so that he could angle opposite the empty space the body had left in the room. "You make sure you photograph this formation straight down. No angles."

"You offered her a job?" Tony nodded agreement into stepping forward, searching over the carpeting before placing his steps and lifting the camera. "Team member?"

"She got a better offer." He tossed it off as he stepped into the doorway to the small kitchenette, rubbing gloved fingers together as he looked over the slightly messy but ordinarily domestic counter. The smell of burnt up coffee and something soured hovered in the room.

"So you offered her dinner instead? That was your counter offer?" There was a flicker of near laughter off the other man's throat.

"DiNozzo," he breathed it off tiredly, shaking his head even while still searching over the kitchen, "what the hell makes you think that this is up for discussion?"

"It was accidental eavesdropping." At least he had the decency to almost sound apologetic. Almost. "You were, like, seven feet away from me."

"You could have distracted yourself."

"I was distracted by you." Tony's voice ramped higher into something that could clearly be classified as an overly affectionate ass kissing. "It was an educational opportunity. I like to learn from the best, Boss."

"You done?" He finally turned a slow shoulder and a chilled glance back toward the younger agent.

"Yeah, sure." Tony flashed him a broad smirk. "Sketch and photograph?"

He swayed his hand over the room, "Any day now."

"So who won her over? Feds?"

Gibbs swallowed the groan as the other man kept at it, "DiNozzo."

"Got it." If over-achieving class clowns (who tended to over dramatize to cover their tonnage of emotional insecurity) could 'pout', DiNozzo had nailed it. "Sketching. And photographing. On it."

"Has to be the Feds. Or Homeland." Tony's voice canted off into a one sided dissertation, the words babbling off him in an unchecked fashion. "Presidential detail and experience in profiling? They'd both pounce on her. Or the Spooks. Which, wow… that'd be worse. Hate to see her become one of the drones."

"You have a job to do." Gibbs flicked into the back of the other man's arm, tipping into DiNozzo's space with a slim nodding. "Which you won't have if you don't shut up in the next ten seconds."

"Yes, Boss." The younger man was already lifting the camera as he carefully side-stepped across the crime scene, the guarding movement both practiced and easily made. "I meant 'pounce' in the most metaphorical sense possible, by the way."

At least it was, actually, less than ten seconds.

* * *

She pinched her fingers tighter around the warm cup, easing her steps slower and bracing her heels quieter against the carpeted floor as she took in the mostly empty but still lit up office. DiNozzo was watching her approach from the upper level and she passed him a smile, his steps also suddenly treading softer and slower as he angled his way down the highest stairs. Bemused confusion made his smile look tipped higher on one side and he waved in return, sleepiness evident in the spaces around his eyes. Kate lifted the other hand to still him with a smile that bred familiarity, catching the perked glance of humor he gave her as he bent into the landing's railing and leaned watching.

Her steps slowed as she angled over Gibbs' desk, leaning a palm along it as she settled to the corner and shifted the cup closer to the way he was sunken low in the chair. She settled a moment before intentionally motioning the cup back and forth in front of him. His neck was canted back at an angle that would have made it impossible for her to turn her head left for at least a day and his polo was slept-in-rumpled, but he looked more than relaxed in his sleep. His eyelids were wearied dark but his jaw was loose, slack and eased.

"Crap coffee and starched laundry." He grumbled the words past lazily moving lips, cracking one eye open into the way she was slowly swaying the cup back and forth before him. "Smells like the Hoover building to me."

"Good guess, but no." Kate murmured softly, stilling the cup and arching her wrist up as she left it centered in the space before his chest. "Good morning."

"No, it's not crappy coffee?" His hand was the only thing to move, palm curving the cup as he blinked a surreptitiously searching glance over her before dipping his head to sniff at it. "Or, no, you're not working at the Hoover Building?"

She cocked her head blankly against his fishing for leads, "I said 'good morning', Agent Gibbs."

"Morning, Kate." A boyish smile finally grazed over his lips before he took a long swallow, a sighed noise coming off him as he let himself look over the tailored jacket and skirt. "How'd you get in my office without a visitor pass? DiNozzo clear you?"

"I still have my security clearance." Her shoulder came up at the same time she crossed one delightfully toned leg over the other and that was about when he noticed how easily comfortable she'd made herself on the edge of his desk.

Well, okay, yeah, he'd already noticed.

But that was about when he realized how much he was truly enjoying the close quarters proximity. For being on the shorter side of tall she had legs that looked awfully long by the way her toned calves curved.

Gibbs lifted her a grin as he wiped his tongue against his bottom lip, drawing down the coffee cup as he shrugged, "Not to my office."

He could have easily curved his hand against her calf just by dropping his wrist.

And he had to wonder how fast her instincts would have had her catching against it first.

"Oh, but I do." And her brash countering caught his attention back up, leaning his shoulders back harder into his chair as he took another swallow of coffee. "Your office? When did you become Director?"

"This?" He swirled the bottom of the disposable cup in a circle, the coffee that was still left sloshing around to support his confident tone. "My office."

"Uhkay." She nodded a droll agreement over him, a smile flushing her a little as she leaned her head and shoulders forward and her hair followed. "How's the case?"

He let himself graze a slow glancing over her face and dark downed hair, "Unresolved."

"That why you slept in your chair?" Her shoulders backed straighter as he stood, keeping an intentional closeness as he stretched his back out and refused to stop looking at her. "You need a bed, Gibbs."

She wasn't about to let him lean intimidation on her this time.

There was nothing stopping her from staying exactly where she was - except for him – and he didn't seem all that interested in making her move from his space.

"I have one, Kate." The tip of his head seemed to lead his smile angling over her and she suddenly realized that's why it always looked so adorably young on him even though his eyes were brightly aged.

She just nodded disapproval at him, "Then you need to use it more often."

"Giving me a reason?" He bit down to keep from grinning into the way she suddenly sucked in a deep breath through her nose, the caramel bright of her eyes flaring a little wider as she stared astonished at him. "Thank you. For the coffee."

"You're welcome." She murmured after a moment, keeping her jaw lifted into the way he was leaned over her.

He finally let himself smile into a silent laugh, voice hashing low and quiet. "Whatcha doin', Katie?"

"Did you just call me 'Katie'?" Her eyes went dangerously thin as her head canted a little.

"I mean in my office at," a deflecting shrug complacently matched the lift of his watch and the shift of his glance, "zero seven thirty. What are you doing here?"

"I have a meeting at zero eight." She uncrossed her legs and leaned her weight balanced back to the floor, standing into how close he kept, head drawn back into the way he damn near seemed to shift a fraction closer. Impish bastard. He was more than incorrigible - he was downright impossible.

"With?" He was scrutinizing her even while lackadaisically sipping his coffee.

Kate lifted her head into his studying. "Tom Morrow."

She wasn't sure she'd actually seen legitimate surprise on him yet.

Felt like a Hail Mary pass to victory.

"Changing your mind?" He questioned tightly, eyes focused on hers so intently that she couldn't tell if she was actually blushing – but she didn't doubt it.

"Just reviewing my options."

A slow nod came off him as he raised the cup and pointed at her with one accusatorily aiming finger, "Shoulda known it wasn't the Feds."

She smiled reflexively into his nodding, watching as he shifted and shoved his chair in and stepped back up into her. "And why not?"

"You smell like lavender too." He held the coffee aside, kept it to his right as he lingered a look down the front of her and dipped his head closer. "And something else. Something deceptive. You're keeping secrets, Kate."

"Boss." DiNozzo distracted her straighter, her shoulders lifting a little defensively to pull them farther separate as he rounded up on them. "Hey, Kate."

"Morning, Agent DiNozzo."

Gibbs had already slanted the other man a look that verged on annoyed contempt, his fingers closing up tighter around the cup, "What?"

"Abby's got that excited yippy puppy thing goin'." Tony waved a finger toward the elevator opposite from where she'd entered the office. "Wants you to see something."

"Okay. Thank you." He nodded an apologetic acceptance toward the younger man before panning blue eyes back to her, "How long's this meeting?"

"I have no idea." She shook her head slowly, letting her shoulders lift and then lax as she met the brightness of his eyes. "Honestly."

"If I don't see you…"

Kate nodded quickly into the way he drawled off the words, his glance catching over her face, "When you're done."

"Right." He lifted the cup again, wagged it between them slightly. "Thanks again."

"Hurry up." She just angled her head aside and toward the elevator, letting a smile cradle along her lips as he banked slow steps backwards before turning his broad back in her direction.

DiNozzo was still watching from perfect stillness at her shoulder, a goofy grin caught up on his mouth as he studied her profile.

"Aren't you going with him?" She asked tightly as she turned her head into how close he suddenly seemed.

"Naw, he generally witnesses Abby's empirical epiphanies on his own." The younger agent waved off, still letting his eyes wander over her face in otherwise silent amusement.

"You're staring, DiNozzo."

His grin seemed to bank even wider than it had been, "I'm trying to imagine what you'd look like as a redhead."

She blinked surprised into the reference, too clearly remembering the woman that had picked Gibbs up straight off the tarmac, "You're incorrigible."

Obviously this other woman had been around once or twice – but he wasn't blocking any of her teasing or, admittedly, intentional flirtation. If anything, he was drawing it out.

Tony just nodded at her once, "Proudly."

She lifted her hand and waved her fingers around in questioning, "Director Morrow?"

"Up the down." He thumbed back toward the stairs and stepped back finally, leaning out of her way as she turned from his scrutiny. "Need an escort?"

"I do not." She wiped against the buttoned run of her jacket as she moved toward the bottom of the stairs, the other hand reaching out to catch against the rail.

"You could get lost." Tony tossed up after her, his glance just noticeably stroking down her legs once before sharpening back up.

Kate banked into the same spot of rail he'd been leaned over earlier, "I'd rather be lost, DiNozzo."

* * *

"I've been told you have a tea kettle stowed away down here."

"Caitlin Todd." He surprisingly praised her name out through the room before he'd even turned from his leaning over a lifeless body, his head lifting a broad smile toward her as he finally faced her. "This is a wonderful surprise."

She nodded quickly, letting her arms wrap against the chill in the room as he turned fully from the examination table. "I was hoping you'd say that. You knew it was me?"

"You've accepted Jethro's offer?" He was stripping off the gauzy cover from his scrubs and his safety glasses, dumping it all aside as he met her steps.

"Not exactly, no." Kate shrugged forward. "It's… under consideration."

"Among other offers, I would assume." Both his gentled hands caught up under her elbows and she bent forward into his pulling, unavoidably smiling into the gentlemanly kisses he banked from one cheek to the other before tucking her closer. "No matter. Come here."

She smiled broader into the clipped up hug he gave her, waving toward the table he'd been at as she leaned back from him. "I'm not interrupting?"

"He's in no hurry, my dear. I haven't even started yet." Ducky waved off before steering her back toward the doors, a palm curling the back of her arm to aim her near the farthest table from the body. "You look lovely."

"I don't look any different, Doctor Mallard." She shook off as he tugged a metal stool from one of the desks, scraping it in her direction before distractedly searching out another.

"Ducky." He corrected quickly with a swipe of his hand.

She agreed to the admonition with a nodding smile, leaning her weight onto the stool he offered her as he settled his own by her knee. "I still don't look any different than I did a week and a half ago."

"More lively." The medical examiner pointed toward her quickly, his eyes softening over her face as he nodded. "You do."

"Less stress in my life right now."

His glance seemed to gentle even farther, if that was possible. An implicit understanding marking empathy across his features. "But also more boredom?"

"Exactly." Kate laughed off affectionately. "I'm going crazy."

"You don't seem like the type who can sit idle for long." He still hadn't taken up his stool and suddenly his head lifted as though he'd remembered something particularly important. "You're very much alike, I believe. The two of you."

Kate watched the quick movements he made throughout the room, a half smile riding her lips as he moved back and forth to gather cups and his stash of tea and plenty of other little ephemera. A silent laugh came off her lungs as he managed a near full service along the sterilized metal of an autopsy table, the image surreally domestic considering the dead body a few tables down.

She let her elbow lean the table, chin propping into her palm as he moved toward the sink off to the side, filling the kettle with tap water. "I'm going to pretend I don't know who you're referring to."

"I'm going to pretend that you're not deflecting my less than subtle inferences." The older man responded with an innocently charming wink. "He likes you, Caitlin. Maybe it's strictly in a professional manner, but…"

"But?"

"I highly doubt it. And do you think my deductions are often wrong?" Ducky asked, his accent arching up as he uncovered a little sugar bowl. "You make him smile. He seems awfully interested in your future whereabouts, does he not?"

"I got a better offer a couple days ago." She told him softly, lifting two fingers into the way he silently pointed at the sugar in questioning.

Ducky shook his head, busying his hands between cups as he sighed out what he undoubtedly found to be a complete truth. "You won't get a better offer than Jethro."

She cocked him a derisive glance that slowly went wending into a head shaking humor as he just grinned at her. "Does he know you're his wingman?"

"Wingman?" The doctor chuckled as he shook his head tightly. "Not quite. Dear friend."

"Lucky for him." She mused softly toward him, nodding appreciation into his unerring kindness.

"That's not to say he's completely ideal." Ducky shrugged off with a suddenly pinched look of acknowledgment, turning himself back to preparing the tea. "Has some communication troubles. Emotionally guarded when he isn't being surly or churlish or both. Stubborn as hell. Often petulant."

The nod she gave him was quick and succinct. "I've noticed. But by all means, keep talking him up."

"So, tell me of this supposedly better offer." He mocked the words at her in response as he finally settled onto his own stool.

Kate let her head tip to the side, wincing a sort of apology. "It's not common knowledge, Ducky. It's not something that's likely to be appreciated at first."

"You mean Jethro won't like it?"

"Not at all." Her lips pursed up a little as she studied the curious way he was watching over her even while distractedly preparing her tea. "Can you keep something from your friend for a few hours? Give me a chance to tell him myself?"

"I make no promises but I shall do my absolute best." He lifted the cup into her hands, jerking his jaw up once to imply she take it before both her hands curled the delicate cup.

"That's all I ask." Kate offered over the steaming heat that clouded a sweetly floral smell up between them. "He'll know by tonight anyhow."

Ducky shied his head to the side in questioning even as he focused on his own cup, "Why this evening?"

"Dinner." She admitted with a soft shrug, inhaling long and deep from the steam.

"Excellent." His head came up so quickly and his eyes were fastened brightly on her as he half smiled. "Has he told you where?"

"Not entirely, why?" Her eyes thinned over him.

"I like to gauge his seriousness about a woman by where he takes her on their first date. It's my own personal… study." He was chattering it off quickly, waving between them in a way that said this sort of conversation was perfectly acceptable between them, regardless of how short their acquaintance had been. "Vicarious living, I suppose?"

She liked how personal he'd so quickly become. How affectionately he'd accepted her.

It was so warmly guileless.

However, maybe a little too fatherly. Maybe a little too affectionate. "Who said it was a date?"

"Your vehement rebuttal just did." Ducky grinned at her as though he'd slowly and meticulously tugged the string of information from an unwilling participant – and she very suddenly realized that he likely had. "You're very much alike, the two of you."

Well, damn. Guileless, hell, he was just as cunning as Gibbs.

But, there was still such an honest affection to him, especially when his palm caught her elbow and he squeezed with an apologetic smirk.

"But opposites attract?" She kept her cup lifted in both curled palms, letting it cool before taking a sip. "Who's the mystery redhead?"

"Wasn't Major Kerry a Marine as well?" Ducky wistfully shook his smile away from her, his voice teasing and still airy with his accent. "You seem to have a predilection for the Corps, Caitlin."

* * *

It was almonds. Maybe cocoa butter, something lotion-like. Something that dwelled warmer than the sharpness of the lavender. And it instantly welcomed his quick leaning into nearly closed elevator doors.

"You coulda held the door." He jutted over her, leaning across her space to jab at the button for the ground floor.

Kate just shrugged off amusement, keeping her eyes forward rather than turning toward the way he bracketed up along her shoulder. "I wanted to see if you could make it."

Maybe she'd just wanted to see him make the half run and full body slant into a closing elevator. Because it had been, as she'd thought maybe it would be, undeniably sexy.

A huffed noise came off him, "You wanted to see if I'd make a run for it or just let you go?"

"Same difference, isn't it?" She finally cast him a small smile, guiltily blinking into how quickly he'd figured the ploy.

"What aren't you telling me?" He tipped over her in a quieter tone. "Besides the job offer?"

More guilt seemed to shade her features and she knew the feel of it dragging her smile from her lips as she turned her glance back toward closed doors. "Same difference, really."

"Kate - "

"Morrow is the better offer, Gibbs." She blunted it out as quickly as she possibly could, dumped it into the humming elevator fast and unchecked – before she could back down off it. "He called me the day after you filed my paperwork."

"But not for my team?" He dipped quietly over her. "That's what you mean."

Kate lifted him a look, finding more blue in his eyes than she'd expected to see as he confusedly studied her. "That's exactly what I mean."

"He wouldn't give you your own team. You don't have the investigative experience."

"It's not in Investigations, Gibbs." She corrected breathily, shaking her head slowly as a swath of remorse chilled on her.

She knew she should have told him before this.

Shoulda laid it out with his morning coffee and before she'd met with Morrow.

His sudden shifting forward and across her had her nearly jumping, her head slanting sharply aside as she watched him catch against the emergency stop and flick it hard with the shift of two long fingers. Her palm came up into the way he swung intimidation back on her so quickly that she was shunting him still in her personal space as the entire car jerked and jacked to a sudden stop.

"Pentagon? Force Protection?" He grit over her, the blue of his eyes seeming dulled out by the dampened lighting in the cramped space.

"It's a back up possibility." She admitted into his swayed leaning, pressing him back sharply by the side of her palm into the center of his chest. "But not his first offer. Said he thought it'd be a slap in the face to assign me to guard the SecNav's daughter straight off the Presidential detail."

He looked at her so suddenly starkly that she knew he'd figured it out.

Because he looked like she'd lied to him over and over and over again when she hadn't ever lied to him at all.

"CI." He coughed it out as he shook his head to the side, slicking his tongue between his lips before wiping on his jaw. "He's grooming you for Counter Intelligence."

"I knew you wouldn't like it."

The crisp glaring he gave back to her had her shoulders tightening up, "You haven't been trained in - "

"I've been trained in plenty, Gibbs." She pushed forward into his space, letting the words out just as grittingly quietly as his had been but no less forceful. "I know a lot of the players better than you do."

He looked down into the way her shorter stature had still stretched him back a little, a half smirk tugging his lips in a way that reminded her of the first little fit they'd had over a dead body more than a week before. She was a little surprised when unexplained patience suddenly claimed the fallout of his frustration and smoothed his features, calmed the volleyed anger in his lanky body.

The way he was looking at her was suddenly softer, a shrug weighing on him.

"Your observational skills and background knowledge. Previous security clearance. The profiling and psychological training. Weapons training, hand to hand." He ticked them off quietly, the rise and fall of his chest balancing even as he let go of the words with just another shrugging. "You're charismatic, beautiful, seemingly innocent… I shoulda seen that one coming."

Her face flit through multiple bemused and blushing emotions in a manner of seconds before her head cocked slightly, a brow arching up hard, "Seemingly innocent?"

"Beginner CI?" Gibbs nodded into a quick downward draw of his jaw. "Your clearance level _would_ nearly rival mine."

"It's technically still a step down." There was a leftover pouting to her shrug that had him turning his head, layering a glance over the way she chewed into her bottom lip as she stared at the closed doors. "Still embarrassing."

"Do the crime, pay the time, Caitlin." He intentionally angled himself stepping between her and the elevator doors, letting an accusatory twitch ride his jaw before he nodded his head up at her. "Were you gonna tell me this?"

She suddenly blinked back to him defensively. "Of course I was."

"Before or after dinner?" The shift of his taller and wider frame closer back into her space had her shoulders stacking up higher than normal and he bit against smiling into the way she glared up at his full height.

"Why the hell do you think I made sure you saw me get in the elevator?" Kate let the words murmur off her before she blinked again, searching the fraction of an almost smile that tugged his lips. "He said you told him I've got balls. That a compliment?"

"Yes."

She searched over him with an intentionally drawling glance, looking down the long length of him before lifting a charmed smile, "You don't often compliment, do you?"

"Nope."

A long sigh came off her that had him lifting his head into the look of disappointment that lingered on her face, "Dinner's off, isn't it?"

"Didn't say that." Gibbs countered with a quick jerk of the head, working his fingers into his jaw before nodding upward. "You take the job yet?"

"Not officially." Kate shook off. "He's giving me a couple days."

"Going to?"

"His?" She asked softly before nodding. "Probably."

"Higher clearance?" He asked into watching her, letting his hand drop dangerously close to the front of her, ignoring the klaxon of warning in his head before he tugged against the front hem of her jacket to tuck her unbalanced and forward. "Less me."

"I've lived many happy years without you." She rolled off blithely before meeting his glance. "You still don't like the idea?"

His shoulders lifted and dropped lazily as he turned away from touching her again. "I'm reviewing the options."

"We staying in here all day?" There was a brightness returning to her voice that countered the still shadowed quarters, made him grin as he levered his fingers down against the emergency stop and sent the car back into brashly lit motion.

"Nope." He kept his back to her as he shook his head, letting his eyes dip shut as he felt her subtly leaning closer to the stretch of his back. "I have a murderer to catch. And we have plans tonight."

"Your case - "

"You told me to hurry up." He angled over his shoulder, catching the side step forward she made in his peripheral vision. "Abs just saved my ass."

"Ah," she nodded into a hummed sound running through her throat, "suspect in custody?"

"I'm on my way, Kate." Gibbs banked her a sidelong grin. "Don't break my balls."

"I already have plans tonight." The tugging of her fingers against the sleeve of his coat had him turning tightly into her leaning, his glance passive as he shook his head in silent disagreement.

"Break 'em." He urged into running two fingertips along the buttoned edge of her jacket, his eyes lifting in a feign of boyish innocence. "C'mon, Kate. It's Tuesday."

"What does the day of the week - "

"Silent Drill Platoon does a sundown exhibition at the Iwo Memorial." A near smile met up on his lips before slacking off. "Every Tuesday."

"This is a Marine thing?"

"Silent drill routine. Perfect precision." He murmured, liking the sudden weakened softness that graced her eyes as she very nearly leaned into the way he was still treading against the fabric of her jacket. "M1 rifles with fixed bayonets, up in the air. You'll like it."

Her head went minutely back and forth as the doors slowly opened, "Gibbs, it's really not my - "

"You'll like it." He whispered it grazing across her hair, breathing it out as his hand pressed her lower back and ushered her along and out of the elevator. "I promise."

And he liked the way she swung around to step easily backwards on heels, it was balanced and edged and it made him watch the center line of her for a second. "Iwo Memorial?"

"By seven." His palm cuffed against the edge of the door to stall it as it started back closed. "Don't be late. Don't change. You look nice."

"I never said 'yes', Gibbs." She was still back-tracking toward the lobby.

He loosened his hand from the door and gave her a lazily mocked salute, catching the roll of her pretty eyes as the doors banked closed.

* * *

Tony let the rhythm of the music thump up the lazed curve of his spine as he launched himself up onto the cleared table, hands curving the edge as he watched Abby type quickly. "Remember Agent Foxy Secret Service?"

"Oh… She of the much coveted Gibbs-ian 'please'?" Her pigtails swayed and bounced a little in a humored jaunt of her head and voice. "How could I forget? You think she's foxy?"

"Her last name's Todd." He fidgeted into a shrugging, catching the interested look she swung around on him.

"Pun-alicious." Abby gave him a quick smile. "What about her?"

"You may have missed her sitting _on_ Gibbs' desk this morning." Tony hushed forward, angling his head as is brows lifted into the coveted information. "After bringing him coffee. Multiple 'thank yous' have joined the ranks of the great and wonderful 'please'."

"Nuh uh. No way." Abby leaned forward, tapping her palms rhythmically onto his knees before pressing against them, a smile in her eyes as she nodded sharply. "One fox, two fox. "

DiNozzo shot her a slanted glance, "You know it creeps on me when you refer to Gibbs as a fox."

"He's crafty. And foxy." She just shrugged, lifting a finger to tap against his nose and force him blinking as his head jerked back. "Are you jealous, Tony?"

A long and loose movement lifted and dropped his shoulders, "He didn't even leave the door open a crack for me. Slammed it in my face first day. I never got a chance."

"She's too Type-A for you."

"You think I can't hold my own against Type-A women?" He asked into the way she was already turning back toward her computer after patting against his knee to the time of the music.

"I think he beat you to holding anything of hers." Abby shot back over her shoulder.

"I think you're right. She had tea with the Duckster too. They're tag-teaming her." Tony let drop between them, keeping his voice toned so that it didn't rise too far over the music but she could still hear him from a few steps away. "Mallardian Wingmen are worth their weight in gold when it comes to women like Kate. Ducky probably reminds her of her sweet and silly uncle. He's disarming, gets women to say most anything."

"And he didn't come dish?" Abby jabbed against one of the keys on her computer roughly, shaking her head as she continued studying the screen. "This lab is not that far away. There's an elevator for easy access."

"They're making dinner plans."

She swung back around sharply, an interested widening of her eyes making her seem even younger than usual. "Her and Ducky?"

"No, Gibbs." Tony's voice lifted higher in range, his hand swinging between them in explanation. "In his, sorta, not-asking-but-telling way."

"I thought he was offering her a job." The scientist's eyes went thinning back to normal size, her dark painted lips curling up on a knowing smile.

"Apparently she got a better offer." DiNozzo shrugged off. "Dunno what."

"She's turning down Gibbs for a 'better' offer?" A cocked glance of disbelief met between the two of them, almost as though Sciuto was personally offended by the decision. "Really?"

"But apparently not for dinner." Tony lowered his tone conspiratorially, smiling into the way she came leaning back toward him. "Because he just walked her outta the building."

"This has the potential for complete disaster. Like, an internal explosion of ridiculous magnitude." Her hands caught against the sides of his face, her features both excited and perplexed at once as she near thoughtfully pouted. "One fox, two fox."

"Seriously, stop it."

* * *

He brushed against her back so carefully, so intentionally softly, it made her hand graze her belt before he'd had a chance to catch against it. "I wasn't sure you'd come."

"You really didn't give me any other option." Kate murmured into the way he squinted as he pressed her hand down with a little force, a quizzical glance riding his brow as he brushed his fingers back up under her jacket and along her hip, grinning into the holster he caught against carefully.

"It's licensed. Registered." She hushed at him, a flush rising on her cheeks as he quirked his grin wider over her and angled his wrist, keeping his eyes to hers as he flexed his palm flat against the firearm. "Personal permit."

"I didn't ask, Todd." Gibbs shook his head, letting the smile fade slightly as he looked down her side and back up. "I assumed it was. Glock?"

"Old habits. I left the 5-shot at home." She grinned into the way his fingers twisted off it and tugged against her sleeve. "There are more people than I expected."

"C'mere." His hand strafed off her jacket and caught the stretch of her fingers, tugging at her as he moved them away from the crowd that had formed behind fencing and stepped her sideways of the large memorial statue.

"Gibbs, they already started." She let him draw her farther from the crowd, let his fingers keep hers half curled into the center of his larger palm as she stroked a glance down how nicely the overcoat he was wearing flared off his shoulders.

"Just the Drum Corps." The blasé way he shrugged it off made her snort out a laugh as he tugged her up tighter, his hand loosening from hers so that he could brace along her lower back. "Come on."

She let him lead her, keeping doubled pace with his long stride as she turned her head into studying him, letting herself revel in being able to just unapologetically look at him while he was focused. There was an agility and strength in his profile, still a starkness to his nose and jaw that allowed he really was younger than the silvering of his hair implied. And he had to know she was staring so intently along the stretch of his jaw because it flexed tight before he turned a cocked smirk into the way she was looking at him. His fingers just flexed up into the span of her jacket as he steered her right, pointing her toward a uniformed Marine along the back side of the memorial.

"Glazer." He jutted up over the white fencing toward a small group of dress uniforms, one of them snapping a little as he searched for the voice that had called his name. "Yo, head up, Marine."

"Hey, Gunny." The young man flashed a quick smile in their direction, launching the rifle he had up weightlessly into his right palm as he took the steps needed to stand opposite them across the fence. "Why're you on the fringe? I got you front seats."

"Thought we'd take the sideline. Stay outta the crowd." Gibbs softened his tone, letting a sway of affectionate respect rise in his words as he nodded toward the exhibition field and then back, "That all right?"

"Sure." The younger man nodded and pointed low along the fence before aiming them back a little closer to the side of the Memorial. "Just hang back from the posts. Hiya."

Kate smiled brightly into the suddenly unswayed shift of attention from the younger man, laughing into the interested way he was leaning closer to her while working his palm rhythmically tighter and looser against the rifle barrel. "Hello."

"Corporal Glazer." Gibbs swung his hand between them. "Kate Todd."

Glazer offered his empty but gloved left hand and she took it easily, passing Gibbs an amused look. "Too pretty for a Fed."

"I'm not at the moment." She nodded back to him. "Thank you."

"She's between agencies and too smart to fall for the glove and sword schtick, boy."

Her grin went wider into his commentary, dipping closer toward the young Marine with a supposedly secretive murmur, "He's only correct in regards to one of those things, Corporal."

"All right." Gibbs hummed between them and lightly tapped the underside of Glazer's arm until their hands parted. "How long have we got?"

"Probably another fifteen. You know these guys are gonna circle jerk as long as humanly possible." He tipped her a wincing glance and then a wink that had Gibbs letting off a quick snort and a shake of the head. "'Scuse me, ma'am."

"Not a problem." She waved off, feeling the shift of the older man's hand rising higher against her back and flat palming against her spine, his fingers putting pressure possessively into her as he watched her speak. "I've heard much worse."

"I can imagine if you're lettin' the Gunny tag around."

"Oh, really?" Kate lifted a glance back toward Gibbs, enjoying the way his head was turned patiently away from the both of them, sucking his tongue along his teeth as he suffered through the taunting. "That bad, huh?"

"She doesn't know you all that well, eh?"

He turned a lazy look back toward Glazer's laughing glance, brow arched and voice running dry, "Where exactly would you like that bayonet to land, Corporal?"

"Upright, Gunny." The younger man lifted the rifle with a smirk in her direction and then back, already stepping backwards.

"Get the hell outta here." Gibbs spoke softly after him with a warmed glance. "Go do your job."

"Good to meet you, ma'am."

She softly returned his goodbye with a quick fingered wave and a glance toward the older man, a laugh coming off her when she caught the pursed up way he was watching her with bright eyes and an arched brow. Kate thumped the back of her hand into his chest playfully, letting him grip into her jacket as he swayed his hips intentionally closer to hers and shook his head silently into her personal amusement.

"He's cute." She murmured with a nod, wiping her fingers along his shirt before she was conscious of it, dropping her hand on a hesitant smile. "Very young, but cute."

"Investigated his girlfriend's death about two years ago." He softened back, the other hand rising to tap against one of the buttons on her jacket, bouncing the movement back to her to steady her hesitation. "They got jacked in Chinatown. He'd just gotten tapped to join the Platoon. Took two rounds trying to get her out of the way, one high shoulder and one collapsed his lung."

"Did you solve it?"

"I had to." He was already shrugging away from her, hand dropped to catch along her forearm, shifting her farther to the left of the statue.

"He calls you 'Gunny'?" Kate asked into the way he motioned her angled to the field, putting them cornered away from it and the view of most of the onlookers. "That's sweet."

"I know his father. Career Marine." He was tucking close again, unavoidably leaning around her as he looked down over the entire length of her. "You really taking Morrow's offer and not mine?"

"Are you really taking it personally?"

"No." He responded unaffectedly, shaking off the concern she'd lifted his way. "Just… considering my options."

"You mean my options?" Kate angled her body into the shifting of his, facing him more than she had been so that he had to watch her or look away.

"No, Kate." Gibbs just grinned into the shake of his head. "I mean mine."

Her head lifted into his playfulness, "I got other offers too, ya know?"

"Fornell?"

"Yes." She agreed quickly, just one swift nod of her head.

"Yeah?" He asked brightly. "A job or did he hit on you?"

She cast him an impatient and cutting look. "A job."

"Just wondering." Gibbs shrugged, letting his glance wander the shifting coloring of her eyes. "Who else? Homeland?"

"I have a meeting with them tomorrow afternoon." She nodded slow agreement.

A pinch landed between his eyes, questioning discoloring the brightness of the blue, "But you're leaning Morrow's way?"

"They'd put me on a desk for a couple years and you know it." Kate lifted her arms against herself, unconscious of the defensive movement as she looked away from him, a frown darkening her face as she watched the Drum Corps disperse farther afield of him. "I don't wanna sit still."

"CIA? NSA?"

"NSA and ATF." She shrugged into his leading, still watching the Marines that were farther out in front of the statue. "CIA's outta my league, Gibbs."

"You protected the President, Kate." He reminded her quietly.

"I know that." Her slow nod suddenly stalled and her head came up sharply, the brown in her eyes coppering a little as she squinted him a glare. "Brigadier General Daniel Glazer, Pentagon. His father?"

The way his grin overtook his entire face – it was a proverbial on-off switch to her lungs. "Only took you two minutes."

"You're distracting me." She hissed back in annoyance, a hand rising to press him out of the way as the field opened empty, her head cocking so that she could watch the Marines set up their formation.

"If you're gonna be CI you need to operate better while you're distracted than not."

"Morrow'd put me through the program, Gibbs." She waved off into the way he'd shifted along her side, the spread of his palm on her hip just as distracting as his accusation as he leaned up into her right shoulder. "He's not just dumping me in the middle of nowhere with a ham radio and a pack of matches."

"Can you operate a ham radio?" Gibbs questioned derisively above her shoulder.

Kate turned her head sharply into his leaning, keeping from meeting his eyes but letting her voice carry back, "Is this entire evening about how poorly suited to the position you think I'd be? Because I eat by myself all the time. I'm a big girl."

A noise of negation grated off his throat, his head shaking minutely closer to hers, "I can't think of a single position you'd be poorly suited to right now, Kate."

"Wow." She let a legitimate swing of wonder gentle her tone. "That was an exceptional recovery."

"I have three ex-wives." He was laughing through the words a little, watching her head turn a little closer to his murmuring. "You think I paid them to marry me?"

"Yet you pay them to be completely divorced from you?" Even in her teasing her voice was sweetened and her eyes still hadn't lifted.

A full laugh took over his face as he glanced away and then rolled a look back over her, exhaling as he let his glance drop over her lips, "Can I kiss you tonight, Todd?"

"Could cost you." She finally glanced up sideways, both shy and bold at once.

"I have no doubt." He nodded and lifted his hand, aiming toward the field. "Now watch."

* * *

He wasn't making the watching all that easy – which she was sure was completely intentional. Because he'd palmed along her pelvis and possessively backed her right up into the front of himself so assuredly that she'd just reflexively stretched leaning into the movement. His thumb was pressing insistent into the rise of her hip under her jacket, fingers still splayed out against her pelvic bone as he dropped his jaw angling along the side of her head.

"They're called the Marching Twenty Four." The words were whispered so softly into her hair that she was sure that nobody else in the world could have heard them, regardless of how close they were. "No calls. No cadence jodies. Garand rifles and sharpened bayonets. Each routine is practiced to perfection."

"Is this your idea of - "

"They absolutely, silently, trust each other." He was pressing her tighter back into him as he curled up farther around her, his words heavily leaned behind her ear. "They have to. Or somebody gets hurt."

Her hand lifted reflexively and dug into his overcoat, pulling on it to stall him slightly but still keep him close. "Gibbs."

He let his body go completely still, just enjoying the slacked back and tucked in way she was leaned along the front of him, "I'm gonna ask you again, Kate."

"Hmmm?" She made the sound off her throat because she wasn't exactly sure if there was an equivalent in their language as to how distractingly warm he was.

"Can I kiss you tonight?"

A winsome smile broke over her lips, "I sorta thought you would have by now."

His eyes slimmed down on her, head tipping long into a patient questioning, "You're really not accepting my offer, are you?

"I'm sorry." She smiled it at him with an obvious leaning of remorse, the edge of her curled palm lifting up to brush into the forward strength of his shoulder.

"Don't apologize." He murmured into shaking his head. "Not for making a decision - not if it's the one you think is right for you."

There was a sudden knowing surety on her as she lifted her jaw at him, taunting him with thinned eyes and a smirk. "You were looking forward to seeing more of me, Gunny."

"I still am." The dipping glance he sent down the front of her before catching blue eyes back up made her smile slant wider.

"At NCIS or - "

"In general." He just turned it out over her as he reached for her jaw and carefully angled her back to watching the twenty four Marines run their exhibition routine. "Watch."

* * *

She smirked into the fact that he was eating her otherwise untouched fries straight out of the wax papered basket, both his elbows leaned heavily on the stacked up outdoor table. "You know I'm not sleeping with you tonight."

"I don't sleep much, Kate." He shrugged as he slanted her half eaten sandwich closer to her and nodded toward it. "You should finish that."

"You know exactly what I meant." She considered the food, lifting the sandwich but not taking another bite. "I need a clear head right now, Gibbs. I need to - "

"You've already made your decision." He interrupted tightly. "Don't - "

"No." Kate dropped the sandwich again, aiming a pointing in his direction that made him obstinately tighten closer over the high table, his weight pressing more on it than his feet as she wiped crumbs from her fingers. "The only thing I've decided that you're not gonna be my boss."

"And your meeting with Homeland is a courtesy on your part." He plucked another fry from her side and popped it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing on a lazy shrugging, "You told me you didn't want it."

"I still have plenty of - "

"You've already decided." He nodded as he pressed up from the table, shoving his half empty and discarded basket aside before wiping his hands against a paper napkin.

"Even if I have," she lifted the half a sandwich as she shifted her weight, "I'm still not sleeping with you tonight."

"I didn't ask you to." He smiled widely, let his grin deepen when she glared at him and chewed down another bite. "How comfortable are those heels? Wanna walk?"

She rolled her eyes as she swallowed hard and shook her head, "Can I finish my dinner?"

"It's mobile food, Kate." He tossed the crumpled napkin to the table, reaching against her wrist and keeping the sandwich lifted as he tugged at her. "C'mon."

* * *

He wasn't necessarily sure what building they'd even ended up in front of, but it was no doubt somehow religious in its usage. The steps were spacious and wide and slacked out onto the mouth of 'P' street like a welcome mat to the arched entrance of the multi storied building. He'd paused and pressed her down onto the steps with a glance into the entrance, making sure it was empty before dropping down lazily a step lower than her to keep their height balanced.

"Heels." She explained into dumping the shoes onto the step, stretching her left ankle out and rolling it. "You coulda told me we were gonna walk the entire city."

"I just paid for a cab half an hour ago." He shot up at her sideways, ignoring the urge to lean closer into her as people passed by them on the street. "You do this often, Kate?"

"No." she laughed out as her fingertip teased the back of his neck, making him wince his head forward from the tickling touch. "I don't."

"Maybe because it's not really all that safe?" he angled back with a grazing tone.

"I feel perfectly safe right now." She countered, her hands bracing against the step so that she could stretch her legs out and cross one over the other. "I'm not concerned, Gibbs. I don't think I've felt this safe since I joined the Secret Service."

He nodded his head up and turned to respond but paused as she groaned off and dug into her pocket, "What?"

"It's my sister." She murmured as she studied the Caller ID on her phone.

He just gave her a passive lift of his fingers, mildly amused by the pout that caught up on her lips, "Go ahead."

"She can wait." She disregarded the vibrating of her cell and set it to the step on her opposite side, the foot she had cocked over the other stretching out long again. "She just wants to grill me about how today went."

"How has your day been, Caitlin?" Gibbs let a little leisure into his voice, let it hush on her as he cocked her a backwards look of humor.

The streetlights made her hair seem dark to black as she shook him a knowing look of reproach, ignoring the way he was drawing on her. "Ya know, she calls me 'Caitlin' when she's steering me toward giving her a specific response too."

"It's an effective technique." He shrugged a little closer as he caught a single man slowly pass them in his peripheral. "Saying someone's given name to take advantage of or imply intimate knowledge."

"And she's a psychologist." Todd shot back, her glance flicking up toward the man and then back down over the way he'd twisted sideways toward her to shift closer.

"Ouch." He chuckled as he shook his head. "Low blow, Kate."

"She's a very good shrink." Her voice perked over him but it was quiet, murmured as she sighed into the swing of personal information. "Although, an especially cruel jurist when it comes to my life choices."

He nodded knowingly. "Older?"

"Oldest."

"And you're the baby?" The backs of his knuckles tested a touch against her knee and she just watched the movement interestedly.

"Three brothers between." She met the movement with her own, tracing a fingertip against the openly vulnerable upturn of his wrist.

A tsk-ing noise passed his pursed lips as he smiled, "Bookshelf girls gotta stick together."

"She's also extremely persistent." She groaned after the phone had shot off rattling against cement again, her hand snatching it up and drawing it to her ear, "Everything went fine and I love you all the way to the moon but - I'm sorta busy, Rach."

"Tell her you're with a man." He consciously made the shift he'd been considering since morning, letting his fingers drop and stroke up under the tight toned curve of her calf as he angled his smile toward her. "Older sisters like that stuff."

Her eyes went a little wider into the way he was rubbing the pads of his fingers against unintentionally tensed muscle, the lean of his upper body bringing him angled into the center of her. "I'm in the middle of dinner."

"With an attractive man." Gibbs added perfunctorily, letting his voice lift loudly in the correction as he turned his head into her shifting, meeting into the turn of her jaw so that he could kiss lightly and teasing onto her cheek.

Her eyes slid closed into his fingertips tickling up the back of her stretched knee, the cell phone angled down so she could hiss over him. "Stop it."

He dropped his hand and shifted back up onto the step beside her, long legs drawn up as he plucked his fingers playfully up under the hem of her jacket and leaned his chin nearer to her shoulder. "Want me to tell her?"

"Gibbs, stop it." She smiled into the slow back and forth shake of her head, lifting the phone back toward her mouth. "Yeah, can I call you back later?"

"Busy." He kissed her cheek lightly before his hand braced up against the back of her head, downing his mouth along the side of her neck as she exhaled harshly. "You're busy."

Kate swallowed against the teasing run of his lips and tongue along her neck, her shoulders slumping as his fingers got knotted up into her hair and dug her still. "I'm - "

"She's very busy, Doc. Call ya later."

He spoke sharply and loudly, lifting the words toward her mouth and the phone before he brought her closer, closing his mouth over hers roughly. His free hand caught the phone and blindly snapped it closed as he drove his tongue between her lips and skimmed it against her teeth. A noise came up her throat that he could damn near taste pleasure on as she sank forward and met his tongue with hers, one of her hands vicing onto the collar of his shirt. It was still raggedly grasped up into the fabric as he dragged his head back and away from hers.

She was breathing through slightly parted lips, her eyes barely focused as she squinted a glare on him. "You're - "

"What?" He asked amusedly, interrupting her. "What am I?"

Kate shook her head as she licked against her roughed bottom lip, feeling the loosening of his fingers from her hair, "My sister is gonna be so pissed at you."

"She'll understand, I think." He wiped the darkness of it flat to the back of her head, the movement gentled by his mischievous smirking. "She's older and wiser."

"You're such an ass." She breathed out simply, her fingers lifting off his collar to wipe still surprisedly against her lips.

"You've said as much." He lifted her phone up in between them, watching the slow dip of her fingers as she took it tentatively from him. "Tell me something?"

"What?"

"You're absolutely sure you don't want the job?" He let his voice thread with an almost request, a near beg for absolute honesty.

Not that he could-would ever beg for anything.

It was the nearest she figured he'd ever come.

So she accepted it. "I'm sure. Why?"

"I'm not kissing you again unless I'm sure that you're sure." Gibbs shrugged it at her as though it was the most obvious of explanations and she'd been an idiot for not realizing its logic. "It's exactly the sort of thing I wouldn't do if you're gonna end up working for me in a week."

She shook her head negatively, keeping her eyes on his as she exhaled, "How often do you use someone from Counter Intelligence in one of your investigations?"

"If the need arises? I don't." He broke off easily. "I use my own people. I trust them more."

Her nodding carried down to the way she was already pocketing her phone back into her jacket, "That's what I figured."

"Don't you dare take this job over mine because of me and… this. Whatever it is. It could be nothing. Could just be sexual." A grin nearly made itself known as her head came up but he tamped it down into seriousness. "I'd be incredibly disappointed in you if you let that sway your decision making process. And so would your sister, apparently."

"Hadn't I already decided before this?" Kate asked him quietly, her eyes dark but not offended, more thoughtful as she considered his implications.

"So you admit you've already made your decision."

"I guess I have." Her dark eyes dipped back over his mouth and he did his best to avoid smiling into the near dazedly way she was searching over his lips.

"I'm not sleeping with you tonight, Kate Todd. Stop looking at me like that."

He watched her laughter take her over completely, her head turning up and away from him as she shook away amusement at his blatant taunting. It was a slow turning back of her jaw that had her eyes gracing over his and he just shrugged, speechless as to what to say next. He was still studying the way bemused pleasure made her blink her lashes down more often than usual.

"I can't help it." She shrugged off the explanation on a sighed sound.

"What plans did you break to be here?" The question lifted quietly toward her. "Eating half a tuna sandwich and sitting on dirty steps?"

"Didn't, really. I haven't seen anyone since Tim. Hasn't been, well, time, ya know?" She bent to reach for her shoes and he caught up one of them first, lifting it into her hand so that she could keep distracting herself while nervously explaining. "I just… I wanted to clear my head. Really consider my options. No distractions, nothing to cloud my judgment."

"And I'm not helping." He admitted softly, a near frown rising over his eyes. "Making a pros and cons list?"

"Possibly." She flushed embarrassment into the admission.

"You should." Gibbs nodded as he lifted the other shoe and forced himself to completely avoid watching the shift of her legs as she slung it back on. "Lemme take you home."

"Okay." She blinked a surprise into the gentling of his tone but shifted her feet under her, pressing off the steps and letting her hand swipe down the back of her skirt to brush away the cement grit.

"Hey." He tugged two fingers against the fabric and pulled, letting his legs lax as she turned a look over him that seemed all too suddenly tired. "C'mere."

"Gibbs." She shook her head over him even as she stepped into the way he kept pulling on her.

"Come here." He nodded his jaw up, cocking his head back on his shoulders as he stretched his hands off her and let them land to the step. "I don't think you're poorly suited to any position at NCIS. I wouldn't have offered you a job on the spot if I did. Okay?"

"Okay." She nodded over him with a pliant smile.

"CI's heady stuff, Kate." The words came off him before he could trap them up and he caught forward against her skirt before she could back away, gripping into the fabric hard and keeping her stilled up. "It's a lot of instinct. You need to trust yours implicitly."

Her eyes went contemptible all over again. "I get it."

"You need to question it constantly too." A tug jerked on the fabric before he shifted his palms back, levering himself up off the step and over her, a head higher from his raised position.

"You're being contrary and cryptic and slightly condescending." She let off wearily as she kept her head turned up to him, the distance between them nearly comical. "It's not attractive."

"I don't give a shit if you find me attractive right now, Agent Todd." He dropped down the steps rapidly as she brashly turned away from him, her steps not quite quick enough to stall the way he grabbed onto her hip and dragged her to a stop. "This is bigger than me. This is your life and your career."

"You don't think I can do it." She accused in a quiet vehemence that made him watch her face with a sudden absolute interest.

"I just told you the exact opposite." His argument leveled into her anger, blocking them up between frustrated and annoyed and, yet, still somehow pressed touching together.

"Then why - "

"Because I know that conceivably, you can." Gibbs nodded quickly, soothing his hand at her hip before he backed his touching off her. "But I also know it's gonna twist you up sometimes. Some of the things you may be asked to do? Ethics and morality become occupational hazards."

His fingers lifted tentatively toward her and she blinked into the curling of one finger as it looped up the chain she was wearing, her head drawn back from the way he tugged the crucifix up from under her shirt collar. "Can you live with that, Kate? Really?"

"I'll do what I have to do." She was so defensive all over again, all tight shoulders and a lifted jaw and a sassed tone of voice as she tugged the necklace back. "You think I haven't sacrificed some better angels already?"

"I think you need to know you have something, or somebody, to put you back on track if you can't wrap your head around it. We all do."

Her face softened as she considered his words, "You making another offer?"

"Sure." He nodded quickly, fingers pressing into her stomach and staying where they were. "But it has nothing to do with sex."

"I didn't think it did." She shook her head into honesty, wide eyes holding his as she exhaled. "How often has your morality become an occupational hazard, Gibbs?"

He didn't answer her, just let his head jerk toward a warning angle that had her watching the hardening of his features.

"A Marine sniper?" A sound of disbelief roughed off her lips as she angled her head to keep him watching her. "Nearly half your background check was blacked out when I vetted you. To me - one of the agents assigned to take a bullet for the President."

Gibbs gave her a blanked glance and light push from steepled fingers, "This discussion isn't about me."

"Ducky did say you have some communication issues."

"Yeah?" He shot back quickly. "He also said that you blushed when he grilled you about me. You're gonna have to work on how open you tend to be about your emotions."

Her fingers caught up on his wrist and she intentionally pressed his hand down off her, loosening the connection between them before turning her steps away from him and the stairs. "That was a private conversation with a friend, not work."

"You consider him a friend?" His voice rose up along her back with a heat of softened pride. "He'll like that."

"I consider him to be far more enchanting than you are, Gibbs." She cast back, swinging him a haughty look before turning back into the way she was confidently walking away from him.

"You sure about that?" He let himself blatantly check out her ass because, frankly, he'd been wanting to for more than a week - and sneaking glances wasn't cutting it anymore.

Her voice tossed back toward him in a way that said she knew damn well what he was doing. "Are you taking me home or not?"

"Guess I am."

* * *

He liked that each time he put his tongue against hers she made it an even match. What he liked even more was the little throated moan she made when he grazed his teeth to her bottom lip. And maybe how loosely pliant she went angling into him, hips first and hands tucked up between them so that her fingertips could wipe his jaw in a way that said she was making sure he really was actually kissing her so damn slowly.

He curled his fingers up into her hair and dug in tight, rasping his mouth from hers but keeping his head leaned in, driving his forehead into her breathlessness, "You gotta stop."

"I'm not doing anything." Her fingers shoved into his chest a scattered up second before she gripped into the fabric of his shirt and tugged tight. "You started it."

"Call Rachel." Gibbs nodded on a livened up smile as he lifted his head to look over her face, letting long fingers stretch into her hair. "Go upstairs and call your sister."

"Okay." The loosening of her hands from his shirt felt slowly saddened, her palms sliding flatly down the front of him as she nodded into a self conscious shrugging. "Sure."

He let his palm stroke evenly down her hair before he forced his hands off her, blinking into the stuttered still way she was so openly staring at him.

He gave her a head shake and a groaning that thrummed off his throat, "Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what, Gibbs?" She looked at him with a wealth of mischief and maybe a little too much knowing.

"Like if I asked to come upstairs you'd let me."

Her eyes went wide, the backs of her fingers thwapping soundly into the center of his chest, "I told you I wasn't - "

"There wouldn't be any sleeping involved, Caitlin." He grit the whisper along her jaw as he tugged her up into him, letting his hands drive her solidly up his front as his nose rubbed along her cheek and his lips aimed right in front of her ear. "Go call your sister. Clear your head. Make your list."

"Don't need to." Kate's hands clenched up into his sleeves and tugged back, warring a response to the way he was keeping her tagged close. "Already made my decision, Agent Gibbs."

"You can use my name, y'know?" Maybe he'd keep his hands where they were – because she wasn't necessarily really fighting the way he had her curled up into his hips. Frankly, she just kept grabbing him up closer. Frankly, he was just fine keeping an entire palm spread along the lowest arch of her and back right above her -

"I just…" A slim shrugging raised her shoulders loosely and he waited into the way she rubbed the fabric of his overcoat between her fingers, "it seems like just another secret you keep."

Gibbs shook his head into a silent laugh, eyes lifting away from her quiet accusation, "It's not a popular name."

"Which one?" she teased into the nearly shy way he was avoiding her eyes.

"Either."

"I know." Kate laughed into lifting her mouth incrementally closer to his, "That was my point. I like calling you Gibbs."

A brightness came back in the blue of his glance but it walled up a little, went darker toward gray as he let his head slowly shake back and forth over hers, "If you'd taken my offer… I wouldn't have touched you."

"No, of course not."

"I'm saying – respect." He went adamant with a tug against her hips, weighting the words by drawing her attention tighter with gripping fingers. "Responsibility."

"I get it." The brunette nodded slowly into his surety, her face slacking passive as she shrugged and wiped against a non-existent wrinkle in his coat. "I know."

"You don't like it when people call you 'Katie'?" The softness of the way he asked it, banking it pliant and warm, it was completely intended to lull her back. And he watched it work as a half smile tugged on her lips before she'd managed to notice and tame it down.

"I never said that." She blushed, though. Nearly. "It surprised me. I didn't expect you to be affectionate. Not there anyhow."

"It's just a name, Kate." He wiped it along her lips and let it linger into slowly kissing her, a little surprised that this time she gave in to him far faster.

The drive of her stretching into the front of him, her smaller hands catching into his shirt and tugging him into an unexpected roughness – it was an unmitigated invitation. She'd let herself into the front of his coat and tucked the entire shorter stature of her frame into his front from thighs to groin and right up his chest in a way that made his hands reflexively clench her closer. She was small but all wired up muscle in the very best of places and he'd known it since the first time he'd had her wrapped up against him.

"Wanna call me tomorrow?" He tasted the kiss off her lips another time, feeling her unconsciously lean into the way he grinned into drawing his head back.

"Before or after Homeland?" She was letting the mixed color hazel of her eyes drop from his glance to his mouth.

And then she nipped her teeth against her bottom lip.

And he was pretty much completely screwed – regardless of the fact he knew she'd damn well done it on purpose.

"Before. Or after. Either." Gibbs rubbed another brushing kiss into her lips and felt her smile victory into the way she caught him up by tipping her head into it, trapping him into letting their tongues trace one more time. "Both."

"You seem to be extremely concerned with my future whereabouts."

He just snorted a half laugh between them as he let the flats of his palms rise up her sides slowly. "You sound just like Ducky."

"He told me I wouldn't get a better offer than Jethro Gibbs." There was something enticing to him about a woman that had absolutely no qualms about softly fixing the collar of his shirt, especially when she'd been the one to not-so-softly ruck it up. "He didn't mean work."

"Sweet man." He gave her a wry grin, enjoyed the way she interestedly and amusedly watched it happen. "That was the dementia talking."

She laughingly kissed his cheek in such a surprisingly innocuous movement that for a moment he may have actually believed it was innocent and not a heated tease that landed her lips brushing along his ear. "Goodnight, Gibbs."

He gripped her closer and still before she could shift away from him, turning his jaw into the surprised angling of hers. "I'm a bastard, Kate. Don't trust him."

"I did like it, by the way." Her voice had stayed softened and welled with heat, completely ignoring the self deprecating warning he'd slacked between them as her jaw met closer to his. "The - "

"I knew you would." The interruption landed fleetingly along her lips and he loosened from her intentionally, pressing her hips back and away from him in a forceful but carefully placed movement.

"Swords and white gloves? What girl wouldn't?" He knew from the sweetened shrugging and tired back sway of her steps that she'd taken the shifting separation exactly as he'd meant it.

He'd had to stop touching her. Or he wasn't gonna stop touching her.

Regardless of the fact her building's security man was watching him with a cagey glance from ten feet away.

"They weren't wearing swords." He lifted his jaw into taunting the words after her, hands dropped to his sides as he watched her near her doorman and lean into the darker man.

She murmured something indecipherable into the other man's smile before squeezing against his uniformed arm and swinging back around, aiming playfully into the way Gibbs was watching. "Do you have a sword, Gunny?"

"Goodnight, Kate." He smiled into carrying the softened words after her, letting his glance hold on her seemingly invincible smile.

"Night." Her tone gentled a little as she stepped back, leaning from the way the other man tugged against the door for her, drawing it open.

He watched her hair as he turned, shook his head laughing into the way the doorman just cocked him a brow arched smirk.

* * *

He knew she was edgy before he set the proverbial caffeine bomb to the table in front of her, tipping his head into the pursed and tightly wired way she was ignoring the stretch of his shoulders. Problem was, he wasn't completely sure what the problem was.

"Abs?" He had no doubt she'd make it infinitely clear in quick order, though. "You needed me?"

"Anacostia." She swiped to the side, pressing the Caf-Pow slowly aside from her computer keyboard, her eyes lifting from it before her jaw drew her attention back toward her computer screen.

Okay, so maybe she wasn't going to tell him.

Eh, he'd figure it out. Wouldn't last anyhow. Not with her.

"I have no reason to go to Anacostia." Gibbs murmured as he leaned his jaw near her shoulder, blinking toward the computer screen before intentionally angling his glance over her profile. "Do I?"

She huffed once, just a single puff of air past deep red lips before she poked hard at her keyboard, the sound striking up before she spoke, "The White House Military Office at Anacostia randomly assigns protectee codenames, not the Secret Service. Traditionally all family codenames start with the same letter."

Uh huh. Uhkay. Female thing. One female verses another female.

Those were generally the exact things he intentionally stepped right around.

The pointedly accusatory way she was glaring him down said he wasn't stepping around shit until she'd said what she wanted to say.

Gibbs exhaled a sigh, angling his head into her near pouting, "This is about what the Secret Service doesn't do?"

This was about her being the best damn little sentry he'd had in decades.

The most loyal too.

"They were created to track counterfeit currency." Abby told him perfunctorily before turning her head back toward her computer, the swing of her hair forcing him to draw his head back before he caught a pigtail across the face. "Not protect the President. Or anyone else."

"Except the American people, by protecting the economy." Gibbs leaned the words back closer to her, letting his head tip affectionately so that he could try and draw her glance back. "Which tends to be intrinsic to a capitalistic society."

He watched the way her eyes slimmed in annoyance as she continued typing and glaring at her own screen. "I'd rather be a Commie."

"Abby - "

"The Attorney General created the FBI because the Secret Service wasn't under the direction of the Department of Justice and they refused to report to him." One of her platform heels took a hard strike against the floor as she finally turned into the way he was leaned close. "They're not trustworthy."

"They're the only Federal Agency to have never been infiltrated by another intelligence community."

She visibly scoffed off as she waved his argument away like she was impatiently shoo-ing it off. "That we know of."

"Abs." He let his shoulders drop a little, smiling a little as he shook his head into her obviously protective fervor. "You've only met her once."

"Exactly." She sharpened back, swiping the Caf-Pow off her desk so that she could suck down a long swallow before biting into her cheek and studying him. "And you took her to Iwo last night."

The bright blink of blue he gave her was, at once, still amused but a little awkwardly perplexed.

"Didn't you?" She demanded sharply into the lab.

Gibbs squinted into studying her, letting his glance drop to the way both her hands had curled the cup defensively into the center of her chest before meeting her eyes once again, "How did you know that?"

"It was Tuesday and you told Tony you had to get to Arlington by seven." Abby murmured into a hushed acceptance. "And he said - "

"You've only met her once." He repeated gently. "Give her a chance, Abs."

"They call the Press Corps the 'Dog Pound'. The Vice President's Office? The Tool Room." She was pacing out her point, one hand swinging the plastic cup along with each strong stride. "Does that really sound randomly chosen to you?"

His palm slanted flat to the top of her table, letting his weight lean into it while his head cocked the opposite direction to track her movements. "Right, but apparently that's just Anacostia being snotty."

"Reagan's Secret Service agents just replace the leaves he rakes so that he ends up doing it for hours." She was near a full on rant, the weight of each step back and forth across the space between her computer desk and table placing louder and heavier as she continued. "I mean, that's just mean spirited."

"He's got Alzheimer's, Abs." He lazed the words quietly after her as she passed him once again. "They're placating him."

"They have codes for everything."

"I know that." Gibbs agreed into her energized turning before she swung back in his direction.

"People. Places. Vehicles." The cup took a sloshing swing close to his arm as she lifted it to expand on each new addendum to the list. "Offices, both physical and vocational. Even the agents have their own codenames. It's sophomoric. And overly dramatic."

He slowly wiped against his bottom lip, exhaling into the silence she'd finally allowed on her way back toward the windows. "She's working here whether you like it or not."

She stopped still and only two feet away from him, her head lifted so suddenly warily that her eyes had gone a little wider. "Tony said she turned your offer down."

"Mine, yeah." Gibbs shrugged as he pressed off the table, leaning toward the scientist with a half smile before tapping against her arm with two fingertips. "But not Morrow's."

"The better offer was a different job at NCIS?"

He stepped closer into her stillness, smirking into signing a quick 'yes'.

Her face became innocently pale in confusion and he smiled wider into the way she just chewed into her lip again before sucking down a breath, "Doing what?"

"It's not official yet." His fingers lifted under the cup, lifting it from the bottom. "Drink that before your head explodes."

"Gibbs."

"Abs." He let off a quiet laugh and shook his head over her concerned watching, "I took her to the memorial, we ate at an outdoor market and took a walk. I left her at her front door. Do you really have an issue with any of those events?"

Abby just gave him a shrugging while sucking against her straw, slimming her glance at him once again, "You don't land on the Presidential detail without being calculating, Gibbs."

"I would hope not." He cocked over her playfully.

Her empty hand knuckled into the center of his chest and rocked him back a little, "As in 'cold and'."

"She's certainly not cold." The response came off his lips a little warmer and deeper in his throat than he'd meant it to, his head cocking to the side as Abby gave him a sharpened look in response.

"Gibbs."

He couldn't help but laugh it off as she pursed her lips at him, her eyes searching over his face slowly and intently. "What?"

"You like her? I mean… _like_ her."

He did, actually, _like_ like her.

And while he wasn't necessarily surprised by the realization, he wasn't anywhere near prepared to discuss it.

He liked liking her quietly. In a way that made her so knowingly smile.

"I'm not… Abs. This isn't Joanie Loves Chaci. I'm not doing this." He shook it off, banking his shoulders back before leaning into a slow turn, already heading for the sliding doors.

"Rosefern." Her voice struck up behind him like she was unearthing something groundbreaking for him, so completely knowing and certain in her fact finding.

"What?" He asked patiently to the side before letting his body swing into a slow turn, still on point in the same spot but focusing on the way she was watching him.

Her shoulders came up in a pouted shrug, lips clamping brightly against the straw as she sucked down another swallow before lifting her head from the drink, "Lace, Victoria,

Starlight, Pinafore, Dancer - "

"Abs." He let a little growl into it, knowing it would ramp her faster to an end result.

Her voice picked up higher and faster, tumbling rapidly through the words, "Rainbow, Tranquility, Evergreen, Tempo."

He banked a backwards step to the doors, hands lifted tiredly. "I'm not doing this."

"It was her codename." She admitted softly, tucking the cup tighter into her chest as she shrugged once again. "I'm saying, it was Rosefern."

The smile tweaked on him before he could curb it and he saw the flick of realization in her eyes as she saw it happen. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Abby slowly set the cup aside to her table before placing a precise step forward, her head tipped forward and angled as she pointed toward his chest. "I'm not gonna be nice just because you say so."

"You'll be decent." He countered her supposed rough and toughness with an affectionate warmth, letting her slowly pace closer into his personal space. "You're a good girl."

Her lips went pouting to the side as she nodded into prodding against his chest with a light jabbing of her finger, "Okay, but I'm not gonna enjoy it."

"Hey," he caught her hand up still, drawing her attention upward with a dip of his jaw and a half smile, "how'd you find out her codename?"

"I got your six, Gibbs." The grin that overtook her lips was both proud and still undeniably secretive, her darkly made up eyes holding his in challenge.

"I know you do." He nodded tightly before landing a quick kiss against her forehead and loosening his hold from her fingers. "First Ladies?"

"Starting with Jackie." She agreed into the way he turned back toward the glass doors, his steps quick and sure.

"You're not subtle."

"Can we codename your ex-wives?" Abby tossed out as the doors gave way for him, reaching for the Caf-Pow again as he chuckled back to her.

"You think I haven't already?"

* * *

He'd cautiously gauged how quiet and still the spacious room seemed as he'd treaded down the stairs, tracking the few occupants and letting his glance only once dart across the large screen. "You needed me, sir?"

"I want you to see this." Morrow lifted his palm slowly, his fingers stretching toward the live feed image of a mostly deserted and undoubtedly European street. From the set up and the cars he could catch sight of parked along a rise of two connected buildings, he had to bet southern Europe. Not somewhere that had international social status or a blooming economy – however, also not anywhere that was necessarily too far below what would be considered a poverty level. It was suburban, but not in the way the Metro area sprawled. Maybe even more provincial, maybe more rural.

"I'm watching." Gibbs shrugged, catching the back glance one of the only two other people in the room gave him, her head swinging quickly back toward the computer she was working at before he could catch her glance.

"Give it about two minutes." The Director murmured and motioned to the empty seat beside him, his body lounged in the third row of chairs with a pile of paperwork spread across the leg he had cocked up onto the opposite knee. "In the mean time, you can tell me how you really feel about the offer I made Agent Todd."

"Caitlin Todd's not an agent at the moment, Director." Gibbs shifted into the empty seat and slacked his hips low into it, shrugging as he studied the feed. "And, except for my own, I really don't have anything to say about professional offers she receives."

"Didn't call you in here to discuss semantics, Jethro."

He snorted derisively into the older man's sharp but quieted response, "No, you called me in here to wait for a building to blow up."

"Not exactly."

Not exactly, no.

Because it was one of the cars that flared a silent but brilliant explosion over the entire screen. And he didn't necessarily flinch at it, but he thinned his eyes as the flames swallowed up the older European model and licked up higher than they would on a newer car.

"Do I dare ask who was in that vehicle?" He felt his voice trick up tight with a little annoyance, refusing the urge to lean a glance over the other man's paperwork as he continued glaring down the video of an explosion that should have died out but just kept raging a little harder and higher. "Or should I be questioning who planted the device?"

"This is Jacobson's set up." The other man's tone made it completely clear that it was the only information he was going to get, the Director's head angling forward despite the stillness of the rest of his body. "Nancy, track this on your monitor. Keep it open and let me know when Rob checks in."

The main screen went suddenly black, dowsing the room farther into an intentional shadowing than it had been before.

"You've been entrenched in here for days, Director." Gibbs let off on a pent breath, his head jerking once to the side and toward his boss. "You're stacking CI and shifting funding. Poaching prospective employees that fit your standards for what an Intelligence officer looks like."

"This man." Morrow shifted a grainy security camera still from the bottom to the top of the piled papers that had overtaken his lap. "I want to know who he is."

Gibbs let his glance grace the paper momentarily, shrugging off the dark eyed and dark haired image before turning his eyes back toward the blackened screen. "Couldn't tell you, sir."

A noise came off the older man's throat, a grunted sound that proved he'd gotten pretty much the exact non-committal response he'd expected.

"I bet you she could. Given a couple days." Morrow murmured as he tagged the photo a little closer toward the side Gibbs was on. "She's motivated, driven. Intelligent, trained."

"I'm not arguing. I offered her a job, remember?"

"Awfully quickly too." Morrow shot back, the bare traces of a bit of humor making his voice almost affectionate toward his agent. "You fast tracked her straight to my office door. I wanna know why."

"I saw a possible asset and took advantage of it." Gibbs turned an honest glance toward the older man, shrugging into the barely there implication. "You have a problem with that, sir?"

"Completely professional." Morrow just grinned into the explanation. "Just like that."

"Director - "

"She resigned for a reason." The Director's tone overtook his but quietly, his voice unforgiving in its interruption.

He nodded a slow agreement into the assertion, angling his head into a sort of humored shrug before lifting a half smile into Morrow's sight, "If a lapse in personal judgment implies a lack of employability then you should have fired me and DiNozzo a few times by now."

"Director, Agent Jacobson just reported a clear exit." The woman's voice interrupted the silent laugh Morrow was lending him and the man dipped her a quick nod in acceptance, still smiling as he waved his fingers up in her direction. "Heading east, sir. Reconnect from temp base."

"Thanks, Nance. Keep track of him." There was a sighing off the other man's lungs that would have been unnoticeable from a distance but was evident in the way he sank a little farther back into his chair. "Jethro, I want her. Just not on your team. Am I clear?"

"You want me sweet talking her on your behalf?" Gibbs laughed it out quietly, shaking his head back and forth before letting the back of his skull land into the chair and press until a pressuring almost pain rebounded behind his eyes. "When you swiped her right out from under me?"

"I want her in this agency."

"So did I." Gibbs blinked his glance open to the high and darkened ceiling.

"I want her on him." He heard the shuffled lift of the photo and didn't need to look down into the man's explanation, more paper echoing a shift as Morrow continued through the stack, "And this one. And - "

"I get it." He exhaled quietly.

He finally turned his head back down and let his jaw angle his glance toward the Director, noting the look of discomfort and obvious concern on the older man's wearied face. Gibbs lifted a hand into the other man's space, letting Morrow drop the stack of photos into his palm so that he could shift through them slowly, studying each one with a continued back and forth shake of his head. He couldn't pin a single face, couldn't drag a name out of memory to match a set of eyes if his ass depended on it.

Maybe he really had been out of the scene too long – because threats were looking more and more like unsolvable mysteries.

"She's at Fort Meade and Homeland today." His boss spoke slowly, curbed it tightly and made it an implicit order. "Talk her out of it."

Gibbs blew out a slow breath and gently handed the photos back. "I'm not convincing somebody to make decision that's wrong for them but I'll talk to her. You should get those to Abby. She might be able to - "

"I already have." Impatience cut the other man's voice dry and dark. "And you don't think it's the wrong decision for Agent Todd."

"No." Gibbs admitted quietly, lifting his hand as he shook his head, "But I question her ability to be…"

"To be what?"

"Calculating." He murmured Abby's reference gently between them, shrugging into it as he continued speaking toward the empty screen rather than the older man. "I like her instincts but I think she's soft hearted. I think she trusts too easily."

"I think you underestimate her." The Director answered just as softly. "She didn't trust you at first, did she?"

"That may be so." He dipped his jaw into a sort of smirking acceptance of the other man's countering. "She needs more training."

"And she'll get it." Morrow agreed without question before his breath dropped on a heaved sigh. "We lost contact with McNeil a week ago. Directly after the assassination attempt."

Gibbs turned him a sharp glance, trying to even remember the last time he'd seen Jeff McNeil in the District, let alone in the building. "Last known?"

"Ruma. West of - "

"Belgrade." He supplied quickly, catching the barely surprised smirking Morrow gave him at the quick recall. "Vojvodina Province. District of Syrmia."

"We can use her, Gibbs."

"The timing could be completely coincidental." It slicked off his lips like grease and tasted just about as oily.

"I happen to know you have a rule about coincidences." The Director wasn't meeting his eyes, instead just sorting through the photos again. "You've cleared the Lanning case?"

"Just paperwork."

"It can wait." Morrow lifted a folder from the seat on the opposite side of him, "I want you headhunting. Not just Todd. There are three others in there I'd like you to speak with. Yates is one of them. She respects you. See where she lands on switching departments. See where you land on her ability to do so."

He didn't accept the folder right away, shifting uncomfortably in the seat so that he could lean forward from taking it from the other man's hand. "Sir - "

"I heard what you said earlier, Agent Gibbs, and I respect it." Morrow nudged the file into his upper arm and he lifted a hand back to blindly take the folder, his shoulders dropping a quiet resignation into drawing it down between his legs. "I'm not asking you to be dishonest with her – or any of them."

"Feels dishonest." Gibbs snorted off and tracked a jaded look behind him.

Morrow just gave him a grin as he pulled a pair of reading glasses from his jacket pocket, an obvious grin brightening through the shaded darkness of the room, "Which is why you don't work in CI."

* * *

He hadn't given her time to change but he was still enjoying the clear view of her bare skinned shoulders as she lifted her menu back to the waiter who had taken their order. It was an otherwise completely professional and clean cut black dress, something she'd no doubt pulled from the Secret Service stock in her closet and thrown an equally perfectly tailored jacket over before taking in meetings with two Federal intelligence agencies. The silvered jewelry and amped up make-up, though? He had no doubt that they were minute details that had been added after the fact. Probably in the car. Probably for him. She was probably one of _those_ women.

The ones that multi-tasked their appearance in the car while humming to the radio and tidily cutting off other drivers.

"Look at me. Right here." He sharply drew her attention across the table as the young waiter left them, lifting his fingers to keep her eyes aimed on his. "How many people are at the bar?"

"Gibbs."

A challenge of a smirk curved on his lips after her cutting tone. "Come on. No cheating, Kate."

"Six. Two couples. Two singles." She told him tightly, keeping her hazel eyes pinned directly on the brighter color of his.

"Wrong." He breathed out as he reached across the table and lifted her wine glass, carrying it central between them and offering it into her hand.

"No, there are…" He watched the tightening and damning flex of her fingers against the stem before she huffed out a breath of obvious annoyance. "Seven."

He gave her a quick nod, "Right."

"Bartender." She just raised the glass in a mocking salute to his lesson even as her eyes thrashed a sort of internal vitriol over him.

"You wouldn't usually make that mistake." He surmised slowly, watching the skim of her tongue against her lips before she took a strong swallow down, grinning into the appreciatively hummed sound she made after the wine went down her throat.

"No, Agent Gibbs." She shook off in obvious frustration and he watched her hair skim along her shoulders and throat. "I wouldn't."

He couldn't help grinning, couldn't stop watching her shake her head in an internalized scolding. "What's distracting you?"

"Why did I agree to this?" She set the glass down with an accusatory note, thinning him a half glare that damn near treaded toward a smile. "Stop smirking."

Problem was, her telling him to stop doing something made him want to do a double round of exactly whatever she was playfully chastising him for, his grin breaking full across his lips as he silently lifted his water glass and took down a swallow. The slim coppered heat of her eyes melted on him a little and she rolled her glance away with a slow shake of her head. The shift of her profile as she pursed her darker-than-daytime lips in supposed annoyance gave him time to study how bright her eyes went when she was wearing a hazy layer of eye shadow.

"You had a meeting at Fort Meade." He set the glass down slowly, angling it to the right of his plate as he caught the way her head struck back sharply in his direction. "So you met with Homeland _and_ the NSA today?"

"How did you know that?" Kate murmured with a low tone.

"I know people."

She shook it off, shoulders flexing tighter as she leaned forward into the table and glared him down. "How did you know that?"

"Morrow told me." Gibbs shrugged off, studying how thinned her features had become in her confusion. "So?"

Her head lifted into the arched glance he gave her, an obvious stubbornness hardening over her face as she lifted a shoulder and banked her jaw down near it. "So? What?"

"Caitlin?"

"Stop it." The snappish tone of voice she leveled at him was in complete opposition to the way she smiled into the full name. "Why do you care?"

"We need you."

"Oh, bullshit." The slanted way she said it with a glass of red wine curled up in her fingers, hazel eyes crowning humor over him and shoulders relaxed slacked back in her chair – it actually made his stomach tense up a little. And his shoulders drop.

He very suddenly realized that her ability to confidently counter him whenever she distinctly disagreed with him was making it extremely hard to avoid saying things that would make her disagree with him - because he liked watching it happen. And he wasn't above drawing it out just to watch it over and over again.

"Maybe I like the idea of you being close." He angled his head to the side, watching her face as she snorted a half laugh into his response.

"Maybe you're more of a charmer than I expected you to be." She leaned back farther in the chair, taking a lazy sip from her wine and shifting from the way the waiter moved in to leave salads in front of them. "DiNozzo learning more from you than his investigative skills?"

"I'm being perfectly honest." He gave the other man a jaunted glance of appreciation, nodding into him before letting his eyes shift back to meet hers. "I offered you a job, remember? I know an asset when I see one."

"They're not bad jobs." Kate lazed off with a sort of sighing in the words, a kind of sad admission as she set the glass down. "They don't necessarily having me wetting myself with excitement."

Good. Don't move an inch. Don't go anywhere.

"Morrow wants me to convince you to take his offer." He aimed toward her food and nodded, urging her silently to eat even as he kept watching her shifting. "He's been stacking his intelligence deck the last few weeks. Has me bringing in ringers. He's insistent that I convince you this is the best offer you're gonna get."

"Why?"

He cocked her a blanked look, arching a brow into an equally dry response, "Apparently he likes you and wants to pay you for something that, oddly, you'd probably actually enjoy doing. What a terrible man he must be."

"No, I mean why is he focusing on his intelligence department so heavily? Why bring in so much new blood?" She'd lifted the fork and waved it over her food, her words flat from emotion and seemingly more curious than anything else. "Unless the old blood's gone cold."

He answered into the slight accusatory note she'd leaned over the table. "Or stagnant. I needed to tell you because I dislike feeling like I'm trying to pull one over on you."

"I didn't expect any differently from you." Her response was light and airy and devoid of any accusation, just so simply put and honest. He may have adored her a little for that clear and impersonal acceptance of honesty.

"Why's he having you do this?" She questioned quickly after, aiming an empty fork in his direction. "You have nothing to do with Counter Intelligence."

He didn't need to correct her. He knew for a fact that she'd taken more than a grazing glance at his file, past adventures included – when they weren't blacked out. She meant currently and she wanted a very specific answer. To the point. No apologies, no excuses. Damn fine woman.

"Use an investigative interrogator to investigate and interrogate prospective employees. He trusts my judgment, Kate. His motives are purely agency oriented." Gibbs admitted slowly as he dug into his own salad, stabbing through it to distract himself from the way her head had tipped her hair away from a particular spot on her throat that he found intensely satisfying to stare at while she swallowed.

"And yours aren't?" He could hear the hemmed approval come off her even as she said it, smirked up into it to find her eyes focused on his face.

"I'm not so sure they are any more. I don't know."

The arch of her glance preceded the pressing together of her lips, the very movement stalling a smile that he knew he wanted to see evolve, "You don't know?"

"Nope." And he banked on knowing how to make that smile come around. "He's given me a simple directive and I just keep thinking about how good you'd look in nothing but one of my shirts."

Her lashes dipped just before the smile went full tilt toward near blushing, "That's not at all professional."

"Not business oriented." Gibbs agreed quickly and amiably, grinning as he lifted his fork and chewed on his food.

"No." She watched him swallow down the salad and reached for her wine, hiding the unavoidably continued smile with a sip. "It's not."

"You would look pretty damn good though."

Her eyes dipped a little thinner, the color of them brightening up. "Gibbs."

A chuckle came off him, "That tone is usually reserved for a 'Jethro'."

"Gibbs."

He nodded a slow and bemused acceptance into her staunch correction. "Caitlin?"

"I already turned NSA down." She admitted into his teasing.

And he just nodded into the information before supposedly ignoring it, "What'd you tell your sister about me last night?"

"That you're an arrogant son of a bitch. But that you smile like a wicked little boy."

Gibbs dropped the smile, shying it away from the way she dipped forward to teasingly watch it, his voice lowered between them. "Should I call your sister? Find out if that's a particular weakness for Todd women?"

She just shook her head at him, like he was completely unsalvageable in some more social regards, "I wouldn't have made it a backhanded compliment if it wasn't."

"Take the offer, Kate." It was a mixing up of an order and a request, the tone he used strident but enough breath in it to keep it softened. "It's a good agency. We take care of our own. They won't watch your six the way we will."

"I believe that." She let off a breathy laugh as she shook her head. "Long as DiNozzo isn't in charge of that particular detail it should be fine."

"Last thing DiNozzo's gonna dare detail is your back end." He saw the wide grin that graced over her lips as she stabbed at an olive, not looking up into the implication he'd flatly thrown across the table as she chewed it down. "Trust me."

"What's it mean for this?" Kate lifted her fork away from the salad, head drawn up as she studied him.

"For what?" Gibbs shrugged off.

"For this." The utensil went back and forth a little, aiming between them and over the table as her head angled, hair tipping forward from her shoulder as she held his glance.

"I don't know." He breathed off as he stabbed at his salad, blinking down over the food as he shook his head. "Same agency, different department. Same building, different floors. When you're in country you'll probably be upstairs or in MTAC. And when I'm on a case, I focus on the case. Kate… I don't choose other things over it. It's what I do. And until it's done, it's all I do."

"Workaholic." She smiled the accusation at him before continuing to eat, the teasing still evident on her face as she chewed.

"Says the hypocritical former Secret Service agent." The retort tipped off him quickly before he took his own bite.

He heard a legitimate sigh round off her as he ate, lifting his head into the way she'd settled the fork to the plate but not dropped her hand away, watching her turn her head away from him with a fixed look. "Why do I feel as though I'd be more comfortable with this if you were the one on my six?"

"Who says I won't be?" Gibbs asked quietly.

"You just did. Different departments." She banked back quickly. "Completely different jobs."

"I've been there. I'll do it again if I have to." He waved off the obvious swaying of concern she was letting off her smaller and more compact frame. "And I told you - we take care of our own. He'll put you through the ringer, Kate. You'll be prepared. You're not going in blind or alone."

"Tell me why he's putting so much focus on building an international intelligence presence." She slowly turned her glance back, stirring her fork into her food but not really doing anything else with it. "I mean it."

"We've always had one."

Her face went obviously frustrated, "But you said - "

"World's changed, Kate. Change with it, or lose the edge." The fork dropped onto the half empty plate and he caught the bemused but wary rise of her eyes, tempering his explanation into the way she just watched him. "And the men and women we protect? The ones who are busy protecting us? They're out there. They don't have the luxury of sitting in a reputable District restaurant drinking Merlot while wearing a very pretty pair of high heels."

"You don't need to be condescending. I was just asking." She replied evenly, shaking her head slowly back and forth.

"Women usually like it when men notice their shoes." He tried the tease to level them back, dropping his head away from the still darkly intent way she was looking at him. "I really thought you'd be more of a white wine sort of woman."

Wasn't gonna work. He could tell just by the sound she made in her throat and the stretch of her fingers against the nearly empty glass.

"You writing dinner off as a business expense then?" Her voice clipped at him tightly, eyes coaling darker than they'd been all evening. "Morrow picking up the tab?"

"No." Gibbs matched the tone. "Now who's being condescending?"

Her eyes flinched even darker and she set the glass down without taking a drink, her head angling into an unhidden pleading, "Can we stop talking about this?"

"Soon as you tell me what you really told your sister about me last night." He leaned back in the chair, head lifted higher as the waiter stepped to the table with both entrees.

"That you're an arrogant son of a bitch." She still laid it out cleanly across the table, letting the younger man hear it tip between them. "But that I like it when you smile."

* * *

"Why Rosefern?" He asked it into the smell of her hair, dropping the words flush into its darkness as she glanced at one of the windows they'd half passed by.

"How?" Her attention snapped tightly back, head lifted as she swung into him and away from the window, pressing up into the curve of him along her side. "You tell me how."

"Two words: Abby Sciuto." Gibbs grinned into the explanation, passing a quick look down into the way she'd gripped up into his jacket sleeve. "Now tell me why."

"They're randomly assigned, Gibbs." Her head shook back and forth slightly in supposed annoyance but he let her shift his forearm down, eyebrows lifting into the way she easily angled into his side as she turned a glance backwards over his shoulder toward the window she'd been so interested in. "Came from - "

"Anacostia." He finished quietly, following her glance as she leaned into the side of his chest, fingers unconsciously tweaking against his shirt.

It was just an innocuous display window, books and journals and stationary and not really what he'd expected to draw her attention away from him. It was something he would have passed without really questioning. But she was still so interested, lips pursed together as she kept her head turned from his. A legitimate blink of surprise took him over when she let her jaw lean along the slant of his shoulder, the stretch of her body softly warm in the way she swayed closer and stilled. She'd managed to lace his arm around her waist in such a delicate move that he silently commended her for it.

"Kate?" He murmured along her temple, undeniably drawn into the effortless and seemingly unconscious way she'd plied a comfortable intimacy into her leaning.

She nodded on a lag of attention, letting his hips shift against hers as he dropped his hands, turning her and stepping her forward even as she spoke. "The White House - "

"Military Office." He inserted just as softly as the previous interruption, curving her up in front of the window so that she could look.

"Stop interrupting me." Her head angled enough to let him rub his face into the silkiness of her hair before she glanced longingly back over the display. "You're infuriating."

"Wanna get a drink?" Gibbs followed the angling of her head and the direction of her eyes, looking over the leather bound books as he intentionally curled her back into him, dragging her tight into the way he pressed forward.

She made a thrummed noise of questioning, "What sort?"

"Bourbon." He answered quickly, letting his mouth edge along her ear, testing the way she tipped her head into the movement. "Journals? You write?"

"No. Yes. I mean... I don't journal or… " She seemed to suddenly realize she was rambling, her hand lifting quickly to catch the stretch of his jaw, wiping the line of it as she turned her head into the downward angle of his. "Where? The drink?"

"My basement."

She snorted into how affably he just shrugged it over her. "This line of questioning usually works for you, doesn't it?"

"Most every time." It was an obviously honest answer, didn't have a reason to pretend any differently. "Tell me why you wouldn't."

"Because you're infuriating." She turned her head long into answering, letting her skull bank back so that she could rest into the forward curving of his shoulder. Her mouth had no hesitation in tracing the angling of his jaw with kisses that were just about as small and compact as she was and he gave in to the urge to lift his hand to her hair. He strafed his fingers through it, leaning into the wipe of her lips on stubble.

"Why else?"

She'd laid the last of the line of kisses just hedging on the corner of his smile, "Because we're about to work in the same building and a week ago you literally said you'd fire me for dating a co-worker."

She had a valid point. And it was obviously tripping her up.

Because when he shot her a sideways glance she looked legitimately worried.

"Technically," The slow lift of his fingers to swipe her hair back was intentional in its comforting shift, intentional in the way he caught against her ear and traced on it. "I won't have the authority to do so. And you're really not gonna be in the building all that often. I told you, when I'm on a case, I'm on the case. It comes first. We're not gonna co-work."

"Gibbs."

"I don't _date_ , Kate." He shook his head down into the admission, watching her dip her eyes closed as she let her head lean into the way he was teasing his fingertips along the back of her ear and then smoothing the break of her skull behind it. "Not well anyhow."

"You've been married multiple times. Evidence to the contrary." Her voice had valved low and warm, concern lost and replaced with an obvious appreciation for the attention he was giving her skin.

He grinned into how much she seemed to be sated by the stretch of his fingers down the side of her neck and along her throat, still watching her face slack passive as he skirted his entire palm under her hair and caught up on her jaw. "Serial monogamist?"

"You said it first." She eyes-closed-smiled like she implicitly knew he couldn't avoid leaning down to kiss her as he drew her head up.

He didn't loosen up on her very much as he turned her, keeping his mouth against hers as he dropped his hands and pried her around to face him. Kept his tongue stroking hers and then his teeth nipping against her bottom lip in a way that he'd already learned would make her a little more pliant. His palms spread up under her jacket and braced evenly on each side of her rib cage, fingers pulling with a pressure that was matched by the insistence of his tongue driving back against hers. The combined press of his fingers against her ribs and the pull he made that flushed her straight into his half hard length had a small sound pressing from her lips to his and he grinned off the end of the kiss.

Her fingers flat pressed along the center of his chest and stopped still, her lungs sucking down a long inhalation. "Gibbs."

"I'm not done with you." It was a promise made with both hands lifting to her head, fingers wiping her hair back off her face as he studied her pinkened lips. "Why Rosefern?"

"I have no idea." She shook her head in a wearied resignation, giving in to his repetitive questioning with complete honesty as she blinked. "You understand the definition of the word 'random', right?"

His fingers traced her hair behind her ear in a movement so slowly made, fashioned to weaken her – and it worked. "It suits you."

Damn her for letting it. Because the hazily pretty way she smiled her eyes closed and leaned into the crowding of his palm was the best tactical response she could have made if she'd wanted to weaken him a little in return. For being as lithe and little and still powerful as she undoubtedly was, he liked how delicately female she could be on a coin toss. It seemed generally subconscious, just a subtle shift she made from unconscious nature to how she'd been nurtured and trained. The balance between was undeniably interesting.

Kate smiled wider, eyes still shut as he curved the side of his thumb along her cheekbone, "I really don't think this is the way Director Morrow expected you to convince me of anything."

"I think Tom Morrow did me a favor." He teased his mouth closer to hers, caught the way it had her head lifting as she felt the shift happen. "You're a pain in the ass, Todd. I'm retracting my offer."

Still her eyes were closed and still she smiled. So trusting to his touching. "Which one?"

He wasn't completely comfortable with how lulled she seemed because it nagged at the more protective curve of his forward leaning shoulders, his fingers tapping her lips to make her break from her dazing. "Whichever one makes it easier for you to come have a drink with me."

"I just did." But she was stubborn in her pleasure and she kept them closed as he traced her bottom lip to try and draw her back to him, the response made quickly and easily.

"You drank." Gibbs countered quietly. "I didn't."

The fluttered way her eyes finally opened in realization of his truth made not watching her blink a bit near impossible, because he hadn't noticed how darkly her lashes laid down until they hadn't any more. "You make me nervous. Liquid courage."

"Jesus, Kate." He chuckled into the blatant and brilliant levity of her honesty. "You are cute."

"I know that." She unconsciously grinned on a nodding.

"Humble too." Gibbs amended into her response.

"I mean I know you think I'm cute." It was a slight embarrassment that had her chewing into her lip, realizing what she'd implied after he'd breathed out a laugh. "Not that I necessarily am."

She was though. Damn cute, sort of adorable, unexplainably all those things he pretended not to be drawn in by (usually). All the little ways to say that, hell, he'd keep finding ways to make her stutter and blush because it was sorta enthralling to watch. Maybe he just genuinely liked making her tip out of control. She seemed generally just as appreciative of control as he was and he could tell. Watching her lose it was more than amusing or interesting, it was making him wanna drive her up against the glass of the window and slide the skirt of her dress right up past the thigh holster he'd caught a clipping touch of as he'd turned her.

Which, for fuck's sake, woman… really?

She coulda just walked into the restaurant naked and given him the same hot pressing gut to cock reaction.

"Wanna do me a favor?"

"Hmmm?" Her jaw lifted into the trailing sound of questioning she made.

"Shut up." This time when he kissed her he didn't curb the shifting of his hands and he didn't give two shits that anyone passing by could see how tightly he dragged her up into the front of him as he took her over and unapologetically owned her mouth. "Come with me. I wanna show you something."

The look she gave him was quickly sardonic, rapidly questioning in the cocked way she studied his face as her teeth caught her lip.

It was the look he'd already seen her brandish in DiNozzo's direction once or twice.

"Not like that. I'm perfectly serious." He graced over her as he skirted his palms a little higher than where they'd caught up on her ribs, watching her face slack a little as he rubbed his thumbs up under the curves of her breasts.

"Okay."

"Yeah?" He asked into the barely hesitant response as he tucked her closer by pulling along her upper body.

The nod on her went completely assured, head lifted as her hands caught the undersides of his jacket sleeves and tucked back. "Yeah, okay."

He gave her a cocked grin that bent into an arched semi glare. "You generally let strange men take you into their basements late at night when you've only seen them twice out of work?"

"If I've previously vetted them using the multi agency access points available to the United States Secret Service?" Kate drawled into the downward stroke of his fingers as his hands sloped down her back, angling off her ribs to both pull into the lower arch of her spine. "Sure."

"And you're wearing your weapon." He nodded into her swing of cockiness.

"Yes, I am." She agreed playfully. "Not on a belt."

"I realize that." His knee intentionally knocked forward into the shift of his weight, watching her eyes widen as he angled pressing into her leg and driving against the ride of the holster she was wearing. "Hence drawing attention to it."

"Why do I feel like you could still disarm me?"

"Because I have already." His fingers caught the stretching of hers as he turned and tugged, clasped up around the way she'd reached into the backwards stretching of his hand.

"Women either love or hate you, don't they? There's really no middle ground?"

He didn't turn the answer back so much as just toss it along, "I'm really not a big fan of gray areas."

Kate snorted hard as he tugged at her again, dragging her up to his pace, "Imagine that."

* * *

He instantaneously decided, as he snapped the cell phone closed, that the back of her neck down to the space between her shoulder blades was maybe the most damning swath of skin he'd uncovered yet. "I have to go."

Because regardless of orders he couldn't help laying his mouth against it as he curled the phone up in his palm and raked the backs of his knuckles down the uncovered slide of her spine.

"I figured." Her head turned opposite of the way he'd swiped her hair to one shoulder, catching the way he looked up at the shift of movement. "You have that… look on your face."

Perturbation and frustration had hardened off the way his eyes had gone gray with a little lust, a deep inhalation through his nose steadying the way he ran his knuckles right back up the same line between her shoulder blades. "What look?"

"Determined and full speed ahead."

She smiled full surprise into the groaning way he curled her back, the empty hand pressing her stomach so that he could shunt her ass directly back into the beginning of what promised to be a possibly impressive erection. She couldn't help but sink a soft sound out as he inhaled from her hair and exhaled a moment later, obviously stalling himself as he let his chest and shoulders carry higher up behind her. And she could have just kept still into how he was trying to bring himself back to level. Could have. If he wasn't so continually insistent about being such a tease and a smartass and always so cockily right. So she shifted into it, riding her hips harder back into him as her fingernails traced his forearm.

"Caitlin." His voice rattled a grated warning through her hair, lungs exhaling completely as he wiped the whole flat of his palm against the black of her dress and backed her still. It was a gentling but sure movement, one that was carefully cautious but full palmed in force. "Been wearing that look for about twenty minutes and you just notice it now?"

"I mean the more professional version." Kate turned the response into his cradling, lifting her fingers against his ear before tugging lightly against it to draw his head up. "Not the equally attractive but primarily lust induced version. Zipper, please."

Gibbs relaxed into how genially she just leaned forward and swiped her hair away from the back of her neck, chin lowered to her chest as he honored the request with gentled fingers. "Lust induced?"

Covering what he'd managed to finally uncover felt a little like a retreat – because there had been a hell of a lot of promise in how gracefully muscled her shoulders and upper spine had been.

The smoothness of her light laughter wasn't taunting in drawing his attention back, just completely bemused. "If that wasn't lust then I'm turning in my rosary, Gibbs."

"You're one of those Catholics, aren't you?" The words went down the back of her neck with the same tracing heat as his fingertips tracing the zipper that ran her spine. "The wicked but penitent ones?"

An echo of a shiver racketed down the back of her and he grinned into how deeply she inhaled through her nose as she ignored (mostly) the hazed softness of his questioning. "Naval Yard?"

"And then Leavenworth via Andrews." He agreed into her turning. "Drop you at your car?"

"You're just picking up and going to Kansas?" She seemed legitimately disappointed. Good. Because he was finding it annoying that she kept making it seem like he was more involved than she was. "At ten o'clock at night?"

Especially when she was flushed all the way down her throat and she kept swiping her tongue along her lips and she hadn't really taken a fully relaxed breath in quite awhile now.

"Morrow wants me on an interrogation, double time." The explanation scraped through his throat a little rougher than he expected, head tipping into questioning. "Continue this tomorrow?"

"You really think you'll be back by tomorrow?"

Gibbs frowned into her tone of disbelief, caught up by her look of skepticism. "I'll get it done."

"I'm just supposed to trust you're that good?" Her voice went a little haughty, lighter and higher in tone. "You really are an arrogant - "

"Caitlin, I am that good. Especially if I have something to look forward to after I get the job done."

She just blinked into the way his eyes went down and back up along the length of her lazily in support of his bluntness. "I'm not your reward, Gibbs."

But he realized that he'd like it if she was, actually.

Because she was suddenly the very sort of pleasure he'd like to sink into at the end of something hard fought and barely won.

"I think maybe you are." It was a murmured counter, one that barely broke off his lips as he held her eyes with his. "For being a wicked but penitent man."

"Christ." Her head slowly went back and forth, eyes pinned near to black in the way she watched him take a step back and away from her. "Maybe you are that good."

He just gave her a shrug. One that said she'd have to find out for herself.

"I'll go with you." She nodded and lifted her hands, wiping her hair back as a force of distraction as she started glancing around her for her scattered things.

"Kate - "

"I have paperwork to sign, a new boss to ass-kiss." There was a legitimate appreciation in her glance as she watched him lift her jacket from the work bench, a sort of impressed heat flushing on her as she turned and slid her arms back into it. "A DiNozzo to mess with."

"You might wanna say hello to Abby if she's still around." And she was still just as swayed by the curl of his hand around her hair, the shifting way he drew it from her collar so carefully smoothly before wiping fabric flat down her back. "Think she's jealous that you made a pit stop in Autopsy but never made your way to Forensics."

"I've met her once." Kate exhaled in defensive explanation, buttoning her jacket closed as she turned and caught the possibly disappointed way he was watching her fingers make the quick and sure movements.

He shrugged it off, though. Quickly turned his head away from the watching to shift away from her and grab at his own coat. "You and I realize that but… Abs is special."

"Special how?" She asked into watching him pull it on, enjoying the rich warmth of the brown as it crested strong shoulders – at least until she realized just how judiciously he was looking at her. "Just wondering."

A warily made look crossed his face, one that was inexplicably offensive and defensive at once. "She's family."

"Okay." Kate let her voice go a little apologetic, let it soften up a little as she nodded into his tightened up movements. "I'll re-introduce myself."

"She'll grill you. Question your motives. Be friendly anyhow. She's a good girl."

"Oh, so it's a familial trait." He liked how chippy her response bounced back to him, how quickly she leaned back into a sort of comforting banter.

"I sorta wanna kiss you good-bye before we leave." Gibbs admitted into looking over her, leaning his larger frame up higher than her. "That's… unexpected. Not sure I like the implication."

A full grin just overtook the way she was watching him, her arms crossing up under her breasts as she shook her head back and forth knowingly. "Still just lust, Gibbs."

He gave her a smirking and a casual lift of his shoulders, letting his head angle into the way he stepped into her defensive posturing. "I can accept that explanation."

It was a purposefully controlled kiss, one he intentionally curbed slow and soft and kept from tipping over into roughness. Kept it smooth as he intentionally closed his fingers into fists and refused reaching against her. The lift of her head into his gentled leaning went drawing a smile off him as he caught her mildly surprised and impressed glance.

"Are we going now?" She asked quietly as she watched him scrape his teeth against his bottom lip.

Gibbs shrugged into a nod of resignation, tightening his coat over his chest as she reached for her bag, distractedly brushing sawdust off the side of it. "You coming back?"

"I still haven't gotten that Bourbon."

"I still haven't actually disarmed you." He added as she lifted her head into the implication, her glance wary as he dropped a hand to the outside of her thigh and strafed a quick stroke against the fabric of her skirt. "You steal that from the Secret Service?"

"It was issued to me." Just a quick little shrug, one that made her head bank into a sideways turn of guilty amusement.

"Yeah, exactly." He chuckled as he waved his fingers between them and turned for the stairs, waving her along behind him. "Aren't you supposed to give that stuff back when you resign?"

"Aren't you supposed to be on a plane, Dorothy?"

* * *

"How fast can you get here?" The older man's voice was rough over the phone line, agitated and annoyed but somehow undeniably… excited. Like he'd bitten into a lead on something and couldn't let out from between his teeth. Classic Gibbs. Go, go, go, do not retreat, go and go, no questions later.

"I dunno, Boss. Lemme track down the fastest route." Tony dropped the chair back forward, phone wedged between his shoulder and ear as he slapped at the keyboard to wake his computer. "You want me at Leavenworth? I'm not sure I'd do well there."

"I know you wouldn't do well here, DiNozzo." Gibbs let a chuckled breath across the line. "Man up. How fast?"

"Yeah, got it. I'm sorting that out." He was already searching various flights, commercial and military, leaned up close to the screen. "Um… Got an Army transport group leaving McNair in about four hours, making a pit-stop at Fort Leavenworth. That's if they'll let me hitch a ride."

"Take it to Morrow. He'll clear the way."

"He's busy." Tony swung the argument back into Gibbs' quick response. "Morrow's with Todd."

There was a surprisingly legitimate pause of breath from the other end of the line and he blinked a bemused surprise before Gibbs finally responded. "What?"

"They've been locked up in MTAC for at least an hour." DiNozzo stretched back a little from the computer, letting a grin take over his face as slacked back in his chair once again. "She started this morning, Gibbs. He's already got her in on briefings upstairs. She - "

"Interrupt them, DiNozzo." That thoughtful pause was gone and any insight he may have had into his boss's interest in the former Secret Service agent was a pipe dream. "This is time sensitive."

"Yeah, okay, but..." He coughed a laugh of derision into the phone, shaking his head as he slanted a glance up the steps toward MTAC's shut door. "That sounds like a really bad idea."

"Which one are you afraid of?" There was a swing of near amusement in the older man's voice.

"Honestly?"

"Yeah," Gibbs actually chuckled over the line, more than just nearly amused, "that's what I thought."

"She had a game face on this morning." Tony slanted over the line as he swung the chair aside and tugged out the overnight bag that he'd stowed to the side of one of his filing cabinets. "Pretty one. Still hardcore. You wanna sweet talk her a little while I talk to him? Might take the heat off."

Silence. Blackened and aggravated in its emptiness, loudly echoing over a slight buzz on the line.

Aaaaaand, shit.

That line of demarcation was pretty far behind him and his mouth once again.

"That… may have been a sort of verbal vomit misstep on my part."

"May have been." The senior agent's voice had pitted gravelly in his agreement, tone directly disdainful.

"Got it." Tony tamped back apologetically. "Get there soon as possible, Boss."

He visibly flinched into the slammed echoing of the line going dead, squeezing his eyes shut as he dropped his head back against his shoulders.

* * *

From the sympathetic look he'd swung her way and the mildly gawked staring Gerald was giving her from over his shorter shoulder, she could only imagine how she looked. Maybe at a loss, maybe a little frazzled. Confused and overweighed by the double stack of files she was holding and the single flimsy report that was leading from her fingers as she stepped past the open and empty autopsy tables.

"Your first day?" Ducky mused softly, his hands lifting so he could stroke the gloves off as she wiggled the report in his direction. "It doesn't look as though it's treated you well."

"It hasn't treated me unwell. It's just… a lot of information." Kate murmured as he took the report, creasing it a scrutinizing glance as he tossed the gloves aside to one of the tables. "A lot that I didn't expect."

"I see." He flipped open the cover and squinted the paperwork a tighter glance. "And this?"

"Ballistics for one of your cases. Abby sent it with me." She shifted the files she was carrying onto the table beside the gloves, letting off a groaned noise as she searched over the way some of them had dug red raked marks against her wrist. "I told her I was coming down here."

"The two of you are…?" His accent lightened in humored leading.

Kate blinked him a suspicious glance as she glared over the folders and rubbed the opposite thumb into her wrist, trying to wipe out the reddened and roughed markings from her skin. "Are what?"

"Bonding?"

Kate just cocked him a scant glance, "She's brilliant and funny. I'd have no reason to dislike her."

Ducky just tipped her a smirk, the ballistics report closed and tucked into his chest, "And she behaved herself?"

"Why wouldn't she?" Kate caught the way Gerald stepped away to busy himself wiping down the table that was behind the medical examiner.

The older man just gave her a supposedly amiable shrugging, his face bright with some sort of personal amusement. "No particular reason."

"You mean besides the fact she's maybe currently one of the most important women in the life of Special Agent Gibbs and I happen to be…"

Ducky grinned into the hushed off twist of her words. "To be what?"

"Absolutely nothing to him besides a colleague." She tossed back quickly, blinking a bit of victory into the mildly hopeful way he was studying her. "The two of you are so concerned about a tension that just doesn't exist. She's extraordinarily charming. I like her."

Ducky just watched her a moment, his eyes downed to where she was still unconsciously rubbing along her wrist before turning back up over her face. And then he just grinned wider as he sighed and waved his fingers between them, shaking his head slowly into an unspoken realization. The step he took back and the look of his face, it was as though he suspected he was somehow being duped. Outwitted. Carefully played.

Admittedly, he sort of was. Because she'd told Abby about every inch of Gibbs' sweetly defensive posturing. His defense of her as family. And it had made the other woman make a little squealing noise in her throat as she'd smiled. It had been legitimately adorable, incredibly sweet. And so ridiculously far from threatening that Kate had just laughed into the heartened way Abby had looked at her with surprised pride.

"And the two of you have found something in common." He surmised as he patted against the edge of the table, smiling wider into how easily she just leaned her hips back wearily against it. "What is it?"

"Nothing in particular. Bullets. Firearms. Tattoos." All things they had actually discussed. Her penchant for multiple firearms and Abby's for multiple tattoos. "God, it's quiet down here."

"As the dead, dear." He quipped with an embarrassedly chagrined look at the obvious pun.

"Do you mind?" She waved back over the table and then around the empty and mostly hushed and spacious room. "I just… I'm not entirely comfortable up there yet. I wanna soak this all up somewhere quiet. No distractions."

The bemused look that lit his glance softened as he tipped his head and tapped lightly against her forearm. "You should go home, Caitlin."

"Some of this can't leave the building, Doctor Mallard." She leaned her head forward as she tipped him a sidelong and wincing glance, dark hair dropping forward off her shoulder.

"If you stop referring to me as 'Doctor Mallard' and start calling me 'Ducky' I'll make you some tea before I head out." His fingers squeezed loosely against her arm just before he pressed away, grabbing up the discarded gloves as he nodded toward the table in tacit permission and waved toward the doors along one wall. "It won't bother you to be in here alone with the silent audience? Gerald and I were about to clean up and head home ourselves."

She just shook her head, already swinging around to start sorting through the stacks of files. "Something strong? Nothing that'll knock me out."

"Of course." Kate blinked sheer surprise into the fact that he just dropped an unchecked kiss against the back of her head, the affection so unerringly natural in such short order. "Welcome to the Navy Yard, Caitlin."

She just grinned over the files, fingers pressing them flat as she kept her head down on the smile. "Thank you, Ducky."

* * *

He'd always been unconsciously interested in how women could manage to sit cross legged in skirts and still keep everything so innocently covered. However, she was the first one he'd seen perched up on one of the autopsy tables with her hair piled up on the top of her head and a veritable rainforest of paperwork dumped out over her skirted lap. Excellent technique - it was keeping everything femininely interesting remarkably well blocked from his watching. Tony lifted his glance higher and smirked into the realization that she'd used one of Ducky's examination implements to knot her hair up.

"Got a message for the Boss-Man?" He slacked his body back hard into the wall across from her, weight pressed into his shoulders so he could cross his ankles.

"I do not, Agent DiNozzo." Kate murmured, intentionally keeping her attention downward even as he watched her flip to the next page of the report she was on. "Why would I?"

He arched a brow into the way she frowned into some scrap of information before she blew out a breath and finally lifted her head. "This is your only chance. I'm headed out to McNair, transport to Leavenworth."

Her palm wiped slips of dark hair back off her face and she shook her head slowly with a slightly humored look. "It's not my only chance. I've got his number."

"I bet you do." He swung toward her tauntingly, catching the sharpening of brown in her eyes as she caged him a glare, tempering his humor a little. "Sorry. Can't help it. It's automatic."

Kate arched her glance back down over the paperwork she'd been so invested in, her hand wiping down the page as she sighed out another long exhalation. "You do seem incapable of keeping your mouth shut when you really really should."

"You'll find it endearing." DiNozzo assured her brightly. "Someday."

"What day exactly?" She asked, letting a little bit of a forgiving smile up in his direction, gentling her voice into how softly and naturally he was just genially grinning in her direction.

"I'm likeable." He explained, his tone slightly wistful but obviously feigned. "Affable. Amusing. Good looking."

"I'm sure you're all of those things." She teased back as she flicked the folder closed and nodded up at him. "According to the sorority sisters."

"Ain't nothin' wrong with sorority sisters, Special Agent Snobbish."

"Especially if they can spell 'affable'." Her voice caught up quickly after his, her eyes following the shrugged smile he gave her.

A sort of sweet glancing came off him as he dipped his jaw lower, blinking as he held her glance. "So no message for Gibbs?"

"I thought we'd covered that already."

"I'm telling him about this little repartee." Tony assured her quietly, pressing quickly off the wall as she reached for another file. "He'll be glad to know we're getting to know one another."

Kate nodded a lagging of supposed agreement into it. "You do that, DiNozzo."

"I'm telling him how cute you look right now." His body aimed forward, fingers ticking against the back of the folder to distract her reading before he stepped rapidly away from her upward glaring. "Seriously, it's adorable."

"I'm trying to work, Tony."

"I see that." He just grinned with a brisk wave. "See ya, Kate."

* * *

"You lied, Jethro Gibbs." There was something endearingly cocky in her drawling tone, something intentionally significant in the first usage of his second name. It was personal and threaded warm, regardless of how haughty it sounded. Maybe more intimate than he'd expected – and he had no doubt that it was an intentionally made play.

Well, hell. Green light, pretty little thing. War-game-on.

"I did not lie, Special Agent Todd. I did break him. Four hours." He corrected lazily as he shifted lower in the back of the cab, trying to stretch his legs a little and wincing against the residual ache in his left knee. "Congrats on the badge, by the way. I wanted to give it to you."

"And you found out more than you thought you would." He could hear the smile of acceptance in her voice even as she averted his hushed pride, could trace the way it culled her voice gentler. "About four days worth of more than you thought you would."

He could damn near see that smile if he closed his eyes. But he didn't. Didn't dare. That'd lead straight to seeing other things. "What're you doin' right now?"

"Honestly?" A laugh trailed off the word and he let his shoulders lax back into the generic leather seat at the sound of it. "Listening to phonetic variations dependent on geography. Accents. Syntax and colloquialisms to follow."

His head perked up from the rise of the seat, glancing out to follow the signs they were passing in the darkened streets. "Language?"

"I'm not telling you. It's a surprise." Kate teased at him, her breathing even and so comfortably relaxed that he unconsciously exhaled hard into it. "Also drawing."

Huh, got it. The fascination with innocently untouched blank paper and bound books with no words made a little more sense now. It hadn't been the journals. It had been the sketch books.

"Drawing what?" He quirked at her, his voice lightening up in curiosity.

"I'm not telling you that either."

He thrummed off a noise of annoyance, squinting on it even if she couldn't see the movement being made. "I haven't decided if I find the subversive thing sexy or not."

"On me?" Her voice perked brightly over the line. "You'll find that it is."

A laugh came off his lips but didn't make much sound, shaking his head as he watched the street outside the window, "How well?"

"How well will you find out?" She taunted at him, her voice more subtly inviting than expected.

"No, I mean how well do you draw?" The correction was soft as he let his head round back into the headrest, elbow riding against the ridging of the window.

"It's a hobby." She cast it quickly off like she wasn't sure she should have supplied such personal information, a quick breath preceding the change of subject he knew was coming. "Where are you?"

"Just landed at Andrews."

"And I'm your first call?" The leading way she said it told him that she absolutely knew she wasn't - and she was testing into how he'd respond.

"No." Clear, quick, and honest. Not taunting, not apologetic either. "Close, though. You were in the top five."

"You could have lied." Kate made a huffed noise that was intentionally winging mischievous. "Made a girl feel special."

"I have a plan for just that." He grinned as he finally let his eyes close. "Arabic?"

"No."

Gibbs grunted into her stubbornness. "Tell me."

"Why should I?" She wasn't half as perturbed as the tone she was using said, because he could still hear an infectious thread of humor tugging through the words.

And he sighed off into it, rubbing the back of his head against the seat before he lifted his empty hand into wiping down his face. "C'mon, Kate."

"Russian."

"Now that I can help you with." He nodded into forcing himself back forward in the seat, shifting once again to try and gain more space in the cramped back seat of the taxi. "You home?"

She hummed a little into deciding what her answer would be. "Working."

"At home?" Gibbs demanded, dropping his voice lower as he caught the way the cab driver flicked him a curious glance in the mirror.

"Yes." The agreement was slow but the sudden intake of breath that carried over the line wasn't. "You're not at Andrews are you?"

"You have about twenty minutes to make sure your doorman lets me in." The corroboration of her suspicion was lowered even softer and quieter. "Or to make sure he doesn't."

"Infuriating." But it sounded distinctly like she enjoyed it. "I find you - "

"You gave Abby a list of Secret Service codes that aren't available to the public?" He interrupted into her ranting, grinning through the accusation to keep it warm.

"I have absolutely no idea what you're referring to, Agent Gibbs." Her response was thready with nearly as much heat. "I didn't give her a list. I showed her one. That girl has a fantastic memory."

"You bought her love with classified information."

She laughed brighter than he expected and he sighed into the sound of it rushing his ear over crappy reception. "I bought a little bit of affection with information that rotated out of use, oh, about forty three hours ago."

"You're right." He shrugged into agreement of her earlier statement. "It is sorta sexy. You gonna let me come up?"

"Maybe." She quipped back. "Did you bring me something from the Sunflower state?"

"I'm not enough?"

"You've had permission to get past my doorman since the other night, Gibbs. You coulda followed me in then." Her voice had wended soft and treaded back toward the inviting hush that he couldn't seem to stop dropping his eyes closed into. "I'm not changing for you. I'm perfectly comfortable."

A brow came up into wondering just exactly what made her comfortable enough to not wanna get out of it. Yet. "Please don't."

* * *

"God Bless Doctor Naismith. And peach baskets."

She was legitimately confused as she leaned into the edge of her door, a cup of coffee curled into the center of her chest as she blinked rapidly and sleepily at him. "What?"

He let his eyes travel the pale stretch of her bare legs slowly, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth as he noted the shortcut white socks before grazing back up the USC jersey. "The man who invented basketball."

The flush that tinted her cheeks made her amusement seem sweeter. "Peach baskets?"

"Doesn't matter." Gibbs shook off as he lifted his glance to her eyes and shrugged into the way she was watching him exhale. "Hi."

"Hi." Kate nodded amusedly, her head lifting into how he purposefully avoided looking back down the length of her and instead kept his eyes on hers. "Instead of nets. I get it."

His fingers aimed toward her on a lazy swipe. "You did this on purpose."

"Like I knew you were coming back today." The former Secret Service agent dumped between them as she leaned heavier into the door, her head cocking at him as she sipped on her coffee. "I was your fifth call, remember?"

"What other sports are you a fan of?" He murmured low into watching her lips as her tongue swiped against leftover coffee.

She snorted as she shook her head back and forth, edging the door open a little farther with a minute swing of her entire body and the sway of the cup between them. "Are you coming in or not, Gibbs?"

"You haven't actually invited me."

Kate just smiled into the way he was still stalled along the threshold of her doorway, his hands curled up in coat pockets as he interestedly looked into the room but didn't shift any farther forward. "That's what you want? An invitation?"

He just gave her a half energetic shrugging, one that made him seem nearly as shy as she'd actually yet seen him.

It was completely disarming. And subtly sexy in its unhurried patience.

"C'mere." Her other hand reached into the hemline of his coat, fingers curling warmly into it before giving a good tug, jerking him past the entrance and in. "I'll get you some coffee."

A laugh came off his throat as she shunted the door closed behind him. "That works."

* * *

Her hand pressed the cover of the folder down and closed before he'd really gotten a good squinting look at the contents, her entire body stretching along the front of him as she kept fingers perched against it to weigh it closed as she turned her head into his searching. Gibbs just smirked into the disbelievingly arched glance she gave him, turning his wrist enough that he could twist a fingertip up into the inside stretch of her palm, teasing against the outstretched hand as he met her eyes.

"Just curious." A shrug matched the impish glance he gave her.

It didn't necessarily work on her. At first.

He watched her chew against her cheek to keep the smile buried as she shook her head and flicked her hand up, catching his fingers between hers. "Do I seriously need to lock up my paperwork, Gibbs?"

"We work for the same agency. Officially." He murmured over her, accepting the cup she lifted into his hand, rolling her a humored look as she intentionally leaned onto the paperwork he'd been so interested in and sat against it on the table.

Kate hummed a sound of agreement off with a nod and a smile, watching him sip at the coffee and make a wincing face as he stared into the mug. "But not the same team."

"Who's he got training you?" His head lifted from the weaker than he was used to coffee, intentionally holding her eyes instead of passing a glance down as she shifted one mostly bare leg against the other. "Huh? I wanna know."

He did, however, let his hand pry from her still curled fingers. Let his palm curve against her calf once again as he intentionally pressed forward into her bare and flexed knee.

He hadn't expected the basketball jersey as acceptable nightwear for one otherwise laced up Special Agent Kate Todd.

He also hadn't expected the sight of it to make his libido choke up the blood flow to any avenue of rational thought.

Rationality? Wasn't a necessity, really. Not like food. Or water. Not always an absolute. Maybe it was worth the loss.

"I have three training rounds with three different agents. Estimated about two months a round." There was a hell of a lot of breath in her voice for it to be so full of information that should have been more pertinent. "Need to know."

Shoulda been. If he'd been actually thinking instead of clenching his palm against the smoothly taut muscle of her leg so that he could tug against her.

"I need to know." Gibbs grit over the way her palms shunted against the table to keep herself balanced, papers shifting under her as she squinted back at him.

Kate shook her head as his hand lifted against the back of her knee and unapologetically shunted her legs apart, her fingers pressing hard into the table as his hips leaned practiced and easily between her knees. "You really don't."

"Caitlin."

"I thought maybe you'd bring me something." She answered the growling sound of his voice so sweetly, tipped her fingertips against his shirt before pushing at him slightly. "I'm disappointed."

"I need to know." He repeated into watching her, successfully ignoring her attempt to divert the track he was on while unsuccessfully ignoring the fact that she slanted back with her palms to the table and her knees bracketing his hips. "I need to know you're gonna be - "

"What?" She interrupted quickly, the wideness of her eyes trimmed down by a sudden defensiveness. "Properly trained?"

"Prepared." He corrected as he set the cup to the table, carefully edging it away from her side as he leaned forward so that he could press both his palms to the tops of hers.

"You mean safe." Kate tossed off, head drawn back as she studied the lean of him over her. "They're just recon ops, Gunny. Stand down."

He gave her a supposedly loose shrugging, letting his head sway back and forth as he blatantly let his glance graze down the laxed front of her. "I'm not implying anything."

The brash coloring of the jersey didn't do all that much for her skin tone.

But, Christ almighty, for being short as she was the woman had legs that went for fucking miles. And the shifting bottom hem cut across muscled thighs and creamy skin and studying the lay of it had a handful of neurons near to imploding.

"But you are, Gibbs. In a way."

He tried to remember what the hell she was talking about as she moved to reach for him – which was a failed effort he'd probably never fess up to. Kate blinked him a shaded glance when he refused to let her hands up, cocking her head into testing the weight he was pushing down on her as he suddenly smirked a silent challenge.

A war game it was, maybe. Maybe he'd even let her win.

But, no - he had to give her due credit. She wasn't an _easy_ target, really.

Because she rapidly made a minute and silent calculation - didn't even try to use her hands. She just lifted a kiss so rushed and rough into his mouth that his eyes dropped dazedly shut as he let her tongue skiff past his teeth and swipe against his own.

"Kate - "

"You're worried about me. It's..." A breathy laugh sighed off her lips as she shook her head into his watching. "You barely know me."

"I know enough." He kissed it into her again, hands sliding the silky fabric of the jersey and dropping as he distracted her by dragging his mouth down the stretch of her throat. The sound that tricked up off her throat as he nipped sensitive skin made him smile his lips into wiping farther downward toward her collarbone, his hands shifting down as well.

And by the time he'd actually gotten the folder completely out from under her ass she'd slammed the heel of her palm directly into his solar plexus and drawn a grunt of an exhalation from center lungs.

Fucking hell. Faster than he'd expected. One small hand downwardly clasped along his wrist so that breaking back against her thumb to loosen it would force him to shift even tighter into the threatening way she'd already guardingly jammed her knee up into his crotch.

He groaned his lips along her cheek. "So damn feisty, Secret Service."

She just snorted into the heady hush of his teasing, "You wanna keep your ability to piss standing up, Gibbs?"

"Tell me?" He asked guiltily into the way she had her jaw turned tightly into his, her entire body jacked still and guarded.

"Not yet. I will, but not yet." She assured, her voice hedging cautious – like she was talking someone down off their edge, hushing empathy on them. "Put it down."

Gibbs lifted his shoulder into a slagged shrug, his head turning to catch the way she was discriminately watching his face. "Then show me what you were drawing instead."

"You really don't understand the concept of personal privacy, do you?"

"Neither does your knee at the moment." He replied, dropping his voice toward teasing on her. "I like you, Kate. I'm interested. Gonna be haughty about it?"

She chewed the inside of her cheek a moment, head lifting reflexively into the playful kiss he jaunted against her jaw. "Deal. Put it down."

He considered the fractional lift of her jaw a moment before he loosened the folder from his fingers, the hush of papers against the table echoing her smile as she grinned and bit into her bottom lip. "There isn't actually anything pertinent in it anyhow, is there?"

"Not in the least." She smiled even wider and he snorted before biting into his cheek.

"What is it?"

Her eyes clipped up brighter than before and she seemed to loosen a little in the way they were still caged up against each other. "Insurance paperwork."

"Yeah?" Gibbs just gave her a wry grin. "How's the dental coverage?"

He grunted pained amusement into the sudden but warningly slight drive of her knee wedging against the half a hard on he hadn't been able to tampen down.

"Could be better."

* * *

"It's my nephew." The words were offered softly over him as she set the coffee to the table in front of him, her fingers intentionally catching along his knee as she skirted past him and the way he was squinting a smirking over the drawing. "He thinks he's my favorite."

"You are drawing him and not the others." He defended the child's possessiveness of her, lifting his head away from the roundly innocent face that she'd captured.

"Never said I hadn't drawn the others." She just cast off defensively as she drew her hand up along her stomach and rubbed into it idly. "Ask any of my nieces and nephews who Aunt Kate's favorite is and they'll tell you they are."

"Beautiful."

He tipped his head into the murmur as she sat angled beside him, fidgeting her fingers against the fabric of the jersey as she intentionally tucked her knees up. His free hand was slow but completely intent as he reached against hers, turning her palm up so that he could stretch out her fingers and rub the pad of his thumb against the leftover stain the graphite and charcoal had left over them. The smile he gave her was enigmatic, like he'd found a secret on her and was keeping it silenced between them. The fact that maybe he had made her tip her hand away from his fingers nervously.

"Thank you." She reached into taking the sketchpad away from him, letting her glance drift the way he lifted it with an open palm stretched along the bottom, intentionally keeping from touching the unfinished portrait. "It's not finished. It's just - "

"It is. But I meant you." Kate set the pad slowly to the coffee table, her head sharpening back in a surprised glance that met the warmly cocked way he was watching her as he spoke. "Privét, krasavitsa."

 _Hello, beautiful…_

Slick son of a bitch…

"Mmmm. Northern Volga." She leaned back into the shift of his hand laying tentatively into the lower slope of her spine, turning into the way he was still so casually slacked back on her couch just stroking the silky fabric of the jersey she was wearing. "No, wait… Moskva. Near Moscow."

A smile flicked along his jaw as he pulled against fabric, fingers catching it up into a fist so that he could pry her closer. "Da, dorogáya."

She hadn't quite caught that last one. But it was something more affectionate than she'd expected. Something personal, intimate in its usage. Maybe even something sweet.

Because he'd paired it with tracing hair off her forehead with the other hand, his face stubbornly passive and unreadable as he studied the darkness of it rather than meeting her eyes.

"You've used it daily." Her murmur flushed fast between them, her shoulders shrugging into the assertion even as he let his fingertips trip lightly along her throat, the light touch tricking her into a hard swallow. "No hesitation."

Gibbs gave her a nod as his thumb rubbed up under her jaw. "I'm impressed."

The pad of his thumb was pressing lightly into the front of her throat, rubbing along her vocal chords as she answered. "By the sketch or the language analysis?"

He forced her head to stay lifted up as the other hand grasped into the jersey again, pulling until she shifted into the movement, letting him lean her into him. "Again, I meant you."

She wasn't quite sure who first decided she'd end up in his lap but she certainly hadn't fought against the shifting, letting her legs straddle against his as he'd jerked her leaning into his chest. The hand that was along her throat stayed flexed warmly still but the other dropped and she murmured a sound of agreement into the way he just stroked off her spine and down, leaning her flush into his chest with one flexed palm against her ass. The movement had her thighs rising into his sides and her knees dug down into the cushions. So demanding but still gentle enough that she could have caught his wrist away from her with a swiped movement. That's why there was a slight pull to the force he was using. An intentional give, in case she wanted an exit.

"I cheated, I guess." She sucked down a breath as his fingers teased up the bottom hem of the jersey and raked light touches along the back of her left thigh. "I mean, I knew you were stationed in Moscow. Subconsciously it was - "

"I realize that, Kate." He just chuckled into wiping against obviously tensed skin, rubbing into the taut muscle as he shook his head up at her. "Why are you so nervous?"

"You're an intimidating man, Gibbs." She breathed out into the way his other hand had rounded off her throat and down the back of her shoulder, keeping her flush into him from thighs to stomach to breasts. He was undeniably sturdy beneath her, the flats of her palms pressing into unyielding shoulders as he just cocked her a look of bemused disbelief.

"I don't think that's it." Both hands were teasing touches on her and she couldn't decide if fingers to bare thigh felt better than the way he was silking the jersey against the riveted run of her spine. "You just kneed me in the crotch."

She just made a ragged shrugging over him, testing a kiss along the corner of his mouth to distract from having to answer.

"Look at me." He cocked his head away from it, jaw lifting to deny her attempt at a deflection. "What?"

"I like you." She admitted quietly, lifting her fingers into wiping against his lips as a smiled tugged at them.

"I appreciate that considering I said it first." Gibbs shot up at her with a thinly accusatory but primarily teasing look. But there was a crystalline sharding in the blue of his eyes, brightened up in pleasure as he held the cautious way she was looking at him.

"Don't be an ass." Her thumb pressed into his bottom lip, a rushed breath coming off her as he nicked his teeth against it intentionally. "I want to impress you."

"You already have." The hand at her back lifted to catch against her fingers and draw them down, caging her hand back and up loosely against her lower back. "A few times."

"I want to keep doing it."

"I don't think that'll be a problem. You've been pretty consistent at it so far." He murmured into her answer, aiming his mouth against her bare shoulder and huffing off a sort of chuckle as her upper body jolted under the wipe of his kiss. "Would you relax, Kate? Jesus."

She was still guarding on him, every muscle he could touch his fingers to so tensed up that she felt like a stretched string, taut and near on to snapping.

"Did you call me 'darling'?"

Gibbs just gave her a lazy lift of his shoulders, blue eyes blinking up into the way she looked so suddenly proud of herself for catching up to his earlier teasing. "It's really a more ambiguous term than that."

"Really?" She quirked at him - didn't believe a damn word of it either.

"Sure." He didn't necessarily care if she did or not, holding the way she was watching him with a slow blink. "Why didn't you stay with me? Coulda been fun, Todd."

She sucked her cheek into her teeth, chewed into it unconsciously as a frown darkened over her eyes, head shaking minutely as she wiggled her wrist into testing how tightly he was still holding her hand back. "I wanted something different."

"Like what?" He tightened on the shifting of her arm, blinking seriousness into the way she shot him a questioning glance and leaned harder over him. "Constantly having to watch your own ass and not trusting anyone? Always looking behind you?"

Her head dipped closer over his and he waited for the kiss she was playing at leaving on him, just blinking surprise when she refused any further movement and just looked over his lips. "I've lived like that for years already, Gibbs."

"Then how is it different?" He avoided matching the way she was searching over his mouth, instead forcing himself to study the twisting colors in her eyes as she very slowly blinked.

"I wanted this." She said it so easily and yet so quietly, letting it be its own explanation as she lowered her head farther, finally laying her mouth against his as though the admission had also been some framing of permission.

Gibbs groaned off the slowly sweet way she was swiping her tongue against his, banking his head back and away from the way she was distracting his attention. "I told you not to - "

"You don't get to tell me what to do. You're not my boss."

Any argument he could have made (had he even really wanted to) was sharply deflected by the snap of her wrist prying against his thumb. He reflexively let her loose, drawing his palms up and away from the shunted leaning of her body as she pressed forward. The surprise of her palms catching his jaw was just a fractured moment before she dropped her mouth hard to his and forced her tongue between his lips. Rougher this time and suddenly completely certain of the movement she was making. No reservations and forward advance. The groan he gave up to her as she wiped upward along his cheeks was more than enough to urge her on, a sort of unspoken victory flexing her higher against him as he let his palms slick down the silky fabric of the jersey to her thighs.

The scrape of her teeth against his tongue led an unintentional growl off his throat and he caught back up into fabric, wrenching it up to bunch around her waist so that he could wipe against the front of thin and soft panties. Something near silky but comfortably close to her skin and so high cut on her thighs to her hips that he groaned into wiping his fingers down her right side, tripping past fabric to skin.

The sudden jerked shake of her head from his had him closing his fingers up into a fist, knuckling into the tightly bunched muscle of her thigh. "What?"

She was looking at him like he had a whole lot of answers to questions he wasn't even sure he could figure from the darkness of her eyes. "Am I making the same mistake?"

"Possibly. But you're askin' a man who's been divorced three times." The flinch that passed her eyes had him biting down on his own sarcasm, an intentional softening falling over his face as he stretched his palm back full against the side of her leg. "I'm breaking my own rules here, Kate."

"How many are there?" She asked with a wary turning of her head, the wipe of her fingertips finding a trail down one of his cheeks.

"Plenty." He confessed as he tipped into it rather than away from it, forcing himself to still into her cautious touching as he realized he'd made the movement. "Some rules are meant to be broken."

"Twice in a row?"

He should have stopped touching her – if he was truly a gentleman.

That's what rattled up and around in his head as she blinked at him.

But the downward drop of his fingers from her leg was caught by the sure shift of her hand, her fingers looping his wrist as she made a noise of disagreement. "Don't."

He lifted her a glance that said he was far more patient than every inch of his skin actually was in waiting. "It's not the same. You want me to go?"

The frown that shattered down over her face was full of confusion, maybe an upset at having implied something other than what she meant as she shook her head. "Not at all."

"You want me to stay?"

Her lips went cradling back toward a near embarrassed smile as she nodded over him, her eyes brightened up a little. "Very much."

So, really, she was intent on making this particularly spectacular mistake regardless of whether it was so damn spectacular or not. The fact that he couldn't breathe in anything but the smell of her and the heat she was cresting into him had him in pretty much the same position. Especially when she was so preciously positioned directly into his groin and so seemingly agreeable to just letting him drive her tighter down into how hard he already was.

"Then it's not the same." Gibbs lifted his jaw into her watching, rubbing the response softly along the closer tilting of her jaw.

"Why?"

He smiled a smug kiss against her cheek, "Because it's me."

"Ya know, your logic usually seems really sound." The hazing heat of her voice had ranged back toward intimately provocative, her hands loosening and going lax as he tugged up on the bottom hem of the jersey. "That argument? Not so much."

He just gave her a cheeky grin and a shrugging as she took over swiping the fabric up and off, his head banking back onto the couch as he wiped his full palm down along the stretch of her stomach. There was a subtle relaxation to his body that nearly infuriated her as she dropped the fabric aside – because not an inch of him was flinching or wavering as he pressed the heel of his palm slowly back up the stretch of her abdomen. Blue eyes glanced down as he let his shoulders loosen, both hands shifting to cradle along her hips and grip against her as he pulled her back up tighter over him.

He seemed stubbornly immovable for a moment, stalwart and unbreachable as he silently took in the stretch of her in her bra and underwear. As though nothing she could do to him, for him, would make him any more pliant than he already was, as though he'd never weaken up the way she obviously did under the run of his fingers and the pull of full palms.

He didn't just build a wall between himself and others – he was the wall.

She tested touches along his forearms, smiling into the way it flexed his fingers tighter into her hips, "You're really an impossible man, aren't you?"

She expected him to smile, expected that proud grin.

He just grazed a surprisingly honest glance at her, snorting out a breath as he held her watching. "By most counts, yes."

Kate nodded slowly. "And you're proud of it."

"Not always." A look that almost went dark flinched off his face as he searched downward, eyes grazing over her as he let a groaning sound off his throat, his head banking lazily to the side as he just studied her. "Jesus, Kate."

"What?"

"You're gorgeous." His tone was graciously honest and bereft of teasing. No motive to it either. Just a pleasured murmur that preceded his fingers hooking down against the waistband of her panties.

"That's not gonna work." She caught against his wrist from pulling, flexing her fingers against it to draw his attention.

And he smirked up at her so slowly that she knew she was absolutely, completely, incorrect. "No?"

It already had. Again.

"No." Didn't necessarily mean she didn't want to see him work for it – because she had no doubt that watching him work a woman was undeniably delicious.

Gibbs just leaned up closer into her, the fabric he was still wearing rasping on already sensitive skin as he aimed his face into her throat. "Really?"

"You're a mistake." The words whimpered out of her a little more begging than she'd wanted, her jaw lifting into the was he was nicking his teeth along her throat and then soothing each stroke with his lips or tongue. "Aren't you?"

"Probably." His agreement was breathed hotly into the crook of her shoulder, hands rising her ribs to finally stroke her breasts, "Does it really matter, Kate?"

"Not in the least."

"Good." He agreed swiftly, one hand lifted between them to crook a finger at her as he leaned back and smirked. "Come back here."

"I didn't go anywhere." She answered softly, taking fists full of fabric into her hands before tugging against it, a pout on her as she urged him into tugging at least one of the shirts off.

He agreed silently, shifting enough to let her lift, chuckling into how quickly she managed to tug into both layers and draw them up. "I'd prefer you didn't."

She wiped her fingers along his collarbone with an almost pleased reverence as both shirts hit the couch, a cocked appreciation arching one of her brows. "You've made that abundantly clear, Gibbs."

A shade of near annoyance seethed off him as he curled her back into his chest. "Jethro."

She let a quietly laughing noise off as she dropped her head back against her shoulders, eyes sliding closed into the strike of his mouth against her throat. "Maybe later."

* * *

She was just as infuriating (or maybe just terrifying) as he was –in a far more delicately feminine way. Which he actually found to be far more subversively dangerous. In the way she was so unapologetically sprawled naked up over him, her breasts pressed into his chest as her fingertips ran a playful gamut from the run of his chest hair to his chin to the nips he sent after her fingers before she drew them swiftly away and back down. There was a slickening of drying sweat between them and the smell of her was screening his senses except for touching – because he'd let both hands lift and dig into dark hair so that he could force her head up. The cross was the only thing he hadn't stripped off her and he tweaked a grin into the way the metal nestled warmly into her cleavage.

"You _are_ one of those Catholics, Kate." The blushing but silent laugh she tried to turn away from him had his lips curving too, his palms keeping her head up with a light pressure from his fingertips. "Look at me."

"You're such a tease." She blew out a frustrated breath as she met his eyes.

"It's not just teasing if she moans as loudly as you just - "

He chuckled into the near slapping press of her palm catching over his mouth to stall the words, her eyes widened up as she leaned higher up over him with a glaring. "Gibbs."

He lifted his fingers into curling against her wrist, keeping it still as he started wiping his lips amusedly back and forth into the center of her palm. "You're not shy, Caitlin. Least you weren't ten minutes ago."

A sort of pride grazed a flushing pink over her face and throat, matching the blood-rushed sensitivity of sweated skin. "You shy, Gibbs?"

"Not particularly." He answered blithely into the way she was shifting her hips over his, watching interestedly into the way it made her chest arc back off his in a movement that he couldn't have made seem that lithe if he'd practiced it over and over again. Such a goddamn woman thing. The ability to look unapologetically elegant while just sitting up and straddling him.

"I don't think that's entirely true." There was a definite challenge in her eyes, one he'd already matched and wrangled once. He'd never had a problem taking on a challenge twice - especially one as trimly warm and arched as she was.

"Kate." The way she lifted her hair off the back of her neck and up to unconsciously dry the sweat that had pooled there made his gut clench up.

"I wanna look at you." She murmured over him, her other palm pressing flat into his chest as she shifted straighter up and pressed down against his waist. The shifting was a constant teasing to how reflexively sensitive he still was, a groaning racking off his lungs as she intentionally lowered completely into his lap and pressed.

She was grazing an intentionally slow glance over him at the sound, letting her nails catch against skin as she raked her hand down. He flinched unconsciously into the hitching shift she made farther down. Her fingertips found a scar that slashed an angle about an inch lower than his bottom right rib, tracing the uneven line of it as she let her hair drop. It obviously interested her, the focus of her attention completely drawn as she wiped back and forth across it. He watched a sort of sympathetic sadness pale on her before her head lifted back up to meet his glance.

"I don't want to know, do I?" She questioned softly, sweat dampened hair dropped down her shoulders.

He shrugged up, pressing from the soft mattress so that he could drop his face into her breasts as he pried against her ribs again. "Come back here."

She hadn't really gone anywhere but it seemed a sudden habit of his to keep her inextricably close and entangled. It was unexplainably comforting to her, though. There was a safety curving in it and around her. She had no doubt that he was just harsh and critical as Ducky had previously implied - she'd seen enough of it to know it was a sharpness he wielded out in front of him. But he'd loosened from it somehow, let it slide off his generally guarded frame and replaced it with a shielding of her.

Kate tipped her head down into the side of his, lightening her tone and curbing it toward comfortingly intimate, "Don't tell me what to do."

"On your back." The way he nudged his head against hers was gentler than she expected but still persistent.

"Don't," she was smiling into his jaw even as she let him start shifting their places, her hands stalling up the movement against his chest, "tell me what to do."

"Just lay back, Caitlin."

God, he made it sound so sweet and so ridiculously dirty at the same time.

She made a quick sound of negation into his throat before wiping a kiss along the side of his neck, letting her tongue ride the cord that flexed under her mouth, "No, Jethro."

His head lifted sharply and turned into the way she was guiltily grinning at him, a brightening of obvious pleasure rising in blue before he blinked accusatorily at her, "That was a cheap shot. Questionable tactics, Agent Todd."

Kate laxed her hands along unforgiving shoulders, closing her eyes into the way she felt down the muscled planes of his shoulder blades to his back. "You're built like a damn wall. You know that?"

"Sure." His hands had already caught her arms up, his voice dry and light in answering as she looked at him. "But you're feisty."

She flushed a smile over him, laughing suddenly into the way he twisted the trapping fingers he had on her wrists so that he could drag them down behind her as he dropped his mouth down her breasts, letting his lips wipe over one of her nipples. Kate blinked the smile quiet, eyes shut again as she arched into the slide of his tongue. The forward press of his shoulders preceded the subtle force he used to angle her back and she just stretched into the movement, giving in to the strength of him. Maybe just because she liked feeling how strong he actually was. Maybe just because she was still a little lazily sated and didn't necessarily feel like arguing with the fact he was intent on focusing on her again.

Maybe he was a little shy. But doubtful.

Maybe he just didn't want her looking at him too much because he was afraid she'd see more than he'd like her to this soon.

"Down." He said it softer than he could have, stretching the long length of his body over hers in a move that she could have trapped back but didn't want to stop.

He'd already proven he could shift her exactly where he wanted her, managed to silently strip her down and drive her into her own mattress with sure hands and a determination to make her come with just his mouth and a singularly stubborn attentiveness.

Even moving from the couch to the bedroom had been a playful sparring, mostly battling hands and kisses and maybe a bit of an egotistical match of prides. It had been the fact that she'd gotten one of his wrists locked up behind him and against the flat of her hallway wall that had made a surprised flick of unavoidable lust haze his eyes toward gray. She realized that had probably been the yielding of his patience, the moment he'd given up on giving in to her and just decided to make her break before he allowed himself to do so. Because after that he hadn't been so lenient or gentle. He'd been completely intent. But the smile he'd given her when she'd come a second time, with him tightly buried inside her – it hadn't been as smug as she'd expected. It had been affectionately proud and innocently pleased and it had been the last smile she'd seen before he'd roughed his mouth against hers and kissed her into his own ending.

And she realized she'd legitimately pouted when he'd pulled from inside her just before coming, his mouth latching against her shoulder on a racketed groaning as he'd shuddered into her top sheet and then slacked off to the side of her before dropping flat onto his back. His left hand had still been so tightly tangled into her hair and stayed there, keeping them tethered up even as she'd stretched into him.

"Kate." He smiled amusedly into the way she turned her head on the pillow, eyes dipped low as he drew her attention back from the way she'd been dazedly wiping through her own hair as he'd stroked his mouth down the front of her. "Still with me?"

"I'm enjoying myself." The hummed heat of her voice proved it true. "You didn't have to… you could have stayed. I'm clean."

He nodded once in agreement, a shrugging on him that was barely patient as he studied the slightly embarrassed way she tucked her head down. "We've discussed this."

"Birth control." She lifted her fingers into tracing his ear, smiling into the way he tucked into and seemingly away from the movement at once. "I'm not _that_ Catholic."

This time when he smiled at her, it was a hell of a lot closer to smug. "Next time then."

She had no doubt that he planned the next time to be in short order because he'd already palmed her thighs back apart and dragged his fingers up between them.

"Still so wet." It was surprised pleasure in his voice, not taunting. And that's what made her hips lift up into how slowly he was sliding his fingers back and forth against her clit. "What am I gonna do with you, huh?"

A moaning shivered off her that she didn't fight to keep quiet as one finger slicked into her, "I have some suggestions."

"I don't need any help, Todd." His smile was wide and completely amused, voice threaded warm as he lifted his head over hers and pressed deeper.

She caught her palm up around the flex of his forearm, holding to him as his thumb took a swipe along her clit that had her back arching hard. "Obviously."

"And tight." The slow lowness of his voice brushed along her collarbone just before his tongue tasted against sweat. "Aren't you?"

He'd admittedly been trying to make that keened sound come up her lungs again.

His head lifted in triumph as he watched her eyes lax completely closed, her head driving back as she teased her nails along the inside of his arm. "You're blushing, Kate."

It was flushed from her cheeks down her throat and rising along the tops of her breasts.

And it deepened in color even as her head drove back as he kept his fingers teasing against her, "You're a bastard."

The name calling was affectionately made – because the real parry was her other hand flattening down his stomach and catching around the length of him as she turned dark eyes down on him. She intentionally measured the shift and speed of her strokes to the movement of his fingers and he felt his eyes flinch into the touching before he realized how smugly she was smiling at him.

Gibbs lifted his head a fraction higher, aiming to kiss her but drawing it back when she moved to meet him. "Still so sure this is what you wanted?"

A snort of amusement came off her as she tightened her hand around him, "Completely."

"Good." His lips met hers on a sharp and chaste kiss before wiping his nose down her cheek with a smile. "Cuz I'd have to ask you to move your hand if you weren't."

She made a quickly negating noise off her throat, letting his lips rub against the smile on hers as she laughed through her nose, "You could ask. I probably wouldn't comply."

"Because I'm not the boss of you?" He groaned into the shifting of her hips, the way she subtly angled them into tangled up legs and too many hands between them.

Kate let him shift her palm, let him sling her back a little again as he stretched over her, "And it seems to like me."

She wasn't so completely sure, but it looked like he almost blushed into laughter.

* * *

At first she'd thought that she'd been the first one to wake, thankful for his stillness as she'd forcefully relaxed the jolt of realization that there was still a decidedly solid man both in her bed and pressed under the half cock of her hip. And she'd flared her fingers slowly out against his chest as she'd opened her eyes, letting her face wipe the sweat that had built between her cheek and the flat plane of his shoulder. Then she realized that the shift of his fingers in her hair was both repetitive and intentional, an idle stroking that would have otherwise lulled her but struck her rigid into the understanding that he'd obviously been awake far longer than she had.

"Relax." It was just a soft order off him, leading her to raise her glance to the way he was blankly staring upward while still sifting through her hair. There was an otherwise eerily still calmness to him that made her uneasy, such a perfect immobility with the exception of long fingers at the back of her head.

"Time is it?" Kate blinked into riding her chin along his shoulder, testing a flattened palm to the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest in breathing.

"Zero five four five. Give or take."

She marginally lifted her head from the stretch of him, squinting a sleepy annoyance toward her alarm clock. Five forty eight.

"You're terrifying."

A smile finally broached the odd stillness of him, his head finally turning into catching her eyes as he palmed the back of her head. "You're the one with a loaded pistol holstered less than a foot from my head."

"Do you ever sleep?" She accused into lifting her jaw higher as she ignored his taunting, letting her leg shift farther between his as his opposite hand crossed over to feather touches along the side of her breast.

"Yeah." He just shrugged at her. "I slept."

"Well?"

An understanding of her nervy concern softened the blue of his eyes and he just exhaled slowly, shaking his head as he blinked, "Don't take it personally, Kate."

Her glance flicked past his head and to the revolver that was strapped along one of the headboard's rungs, the grip the only part that was visible, the unsnapped holster strap, but not much else. "How'd you know it was loaded?"

A blasé glance went over his face as he studied hers, "Why have it your in bed if it isn't?"

"So I sleep with a gun." She angled her hip higher up against his, sighing off into the way he angled into the shift so that he could slant her farther over him. "Are you mocking me?"

"Not in the least." A proud and laughing smirk had brightened his eyes, his fingers loosely catching her hair out of her face in a move that surprised her by its intimacy. "I'm making the coffee this morning."

"Why?"

"Because what you drink isn't actually coffee."

"And what you drink should be considered a hazardous material." "I'm surprised you don't have an ulcer."

He shook his head back and forth like he'd made a sudden revelation in studying her, the full span of his chest overtaking hers as he stretched his weight up into his palms. "I like scrapping with you, Todd."

"You like being a contrary son of a bitch." Light running fingers found the center line of his sternum as she lifted her head into the way his was dipping down. "You hungry?"

A half smile tugged along his lips as he stared at her mouth, stalled in the way he'd been aiming to kiss her. "I didn't wake you up for free eggs and toast, Kate."

He had woken her, though. She hadn't necessarily realized it at first. It had been the insistent rub of slow fingers through her hair and against her scalp, a subtle wipe of comforting that had drawn her out of sleep.

"Who said they'd be free?" She asked into how intent he suddenly was in laying his mouth down her throat, giving up on getting a kiss and just dropping lower.

He chuckled into the stroke of her clavicle. "Maybe I'll open a house tab."

"Who said you'd be coming back, Gunny?" Her fingers found the velveted softness of the short trimmed hair at the back of his head, rubbed into it as she tried to lull herself despite the fact that he was slicking hot and damp kisses ridiculously slowly down the front of her.

"Oh," More laughter lingered down between her breasts, "I am."

"Well, you did invite yourself the first time."

His head lifted lazily, caging himself lower against her by his elbows as he half shrugged and wiped a stubbled cheek along her abdomen. "Didn't seem to bother you last night."

"Doesn't bother me at all." She tweaked at his hair as he rashed her skin redder and kissed back over it, making her stomach tighten up. "Are you making coffee or aren't you?"

"I'm getting there." His voice cut toward a sort of impatience, blue eyes lifting back toward her as his fingers ribbed against her waist and pressed tightness.

"Get there faster."

The smirk he gave her was downright devious, fingertips tapping against her lightly before he boyishly set his chin along her hipbone. "To the coffee or breakfast?"

"You just said you didn't want… oh." She sucked in a tight breath, tipping her fingers against his wrist in a flush of understanding. "Got it."

He simply grinned before shaking his head on a laugh down the run of her pelvis, mouth strafing kisses on tensed skin. "I missed your first day. I'm making up for it."

"I didn't argue." She murmured into bemused surprise, hips jutting up into the way he intentionally angled her leg farther aside. "Continue."

His laughter fell hot against her thigh, followed by the swipe of his tongue, "Yes, ma'am."

* * *

An extra swill of creamer. Okay, two extra. And a little sugar. And then it resembled something more like what she was accustomed to drinking. Still with a twang of battery acid and unresolved bitterness. But, acceptable. Especially when combined with the press of his hand rising up the length of her spine. His palm caged into the back of her neck as he reached for the cup she hadn't doctored, fingers rubbing heat into her hair and onto her skin.

"Never mess with a Marine's coffee, Katie." The hushed heat of his voice had her swaying around against the counter, tucking the cup up as she watched him take a deep swallow of his coffee and groan it out as his hand dropped off her. "Not if you wanna live."

"That a rule too?" She teased up into the way he'd peaked a glancing down both her cup and the front of her shirt at once, easily realizing he wasn't getting much of an angle down the jersey before smirking back up at her.

A sharp nod came off him. "Twenty three."

"This isn't normal for you, is it?" Her knuckles prodded into his chest playfully, nudging him back a little in a move that just made him step tighter into her in countering.

"Not typical, no." Gibbs admitted into leaning tighter, keeping his shoulders slacked back even as he looked down over her. "I usually wake up under my boat."

The brunette gave him a dry and sardonic glance, "As I recall, I nearly woke up under your boat."

"You sayin' it's not still a possibility?" He teased as he leaned a wipe of his lips against her cheek, her head angling into the way he started down toward her throat.

"I didn't say that at all." Her voice had started strong but had trailed a little breathless, head tipped and eyes brightening up into the realization that there was a magnet in the shape of the state of Kansas holding one of her nephew's drawings to the side of the fridge as though it had always been crookedly pinned there.

His free hand was suddenly pulling her jaw back to meeting his glance, his features slacked intentionally passive as he angled questioning over her, "Kate?"

"You can have the shower first." She couldn't help but smile, lifting her coffee into her lips and taking down a swallow as he watched, his glance following the quickly darting look she sent to the fridge and then back to him. "I don't have to be in conference until nine."

He nodded sure agreement to her sweetly silent acceptance of the gift before lifting his own mug, his hips slanting a little closer into hers as he caught her hazeled eyes coming back to his intently. "Who are you conferencing with?

"Gibbs."

"C'mon, Kate." It was just a quiet questioning, eyebrows lifted in waiting. "Bare minimum."

She squinted a glance over him before sighing, the cup lowered a little as she gave in to the stubborn way he flexed his jaw in waiting, "Grozny."

"Chechen Republic." He nodded as he swayed the cup a little. "Okay."

She blinked surprise over the breathy way he just said it in approval, his hips already shifting away as he brushed his empty fingers along her stomach and up. "Just 'okay'?"

"Yeah." He nodded once before wiping a traced line against her bottom lip, nodding jerkily again before he forced a step back. "Okay."

Kate watched him move across the kitchen quickly, chugging down steaming coffee as he stretched his shoulders back loosely, shaking her head into it with a silent laugh.

"Hey." He'd sharpened off a turn at the doorway, lifting the cup a little higher in her direction. "You end up near Grozny, you're making every damn check in required by agency regulations."

She gave him an arched glance, "Don't lecture me about protocol."

"It's not a lecture." He tipped back quickly, a wide step taking him strongly into the center of her kitchen in a way that unequivocally owned the room. "It's fact, Kate. You will make every check in required by - "

"Agency regulations." She nodded tightly. "Yes, I will. This is exactly why I shouldn't have told you."

He just blinked at her with a lift of his cup, the blue of his eyes brighter as he searched down the front of her. "You coming or not?"

"Gonna stop being you?"

The sardonic look of disbelief he gave her was the only necessary response and she just snorted into it.

"Didn't think so." She shot off.

"C'mon, Agent Todd." He aimed a nodding toward the doorway, a slow smile brooking back between them. "We'll conserve water."

She sighed as stepped into the lean of his hips, slapping against the side of his leg in annoyance even as he cradled up into the back of her and walked her forward, face pressed into her hair.

* * *

Ducky was blatantly staring at him, head tip cocked and eyes thin as he pursed his lips up. And he wasn't talking anymore. Because seconds before, he'd been talking.

Correction, rambling. He'd been on a jaunty vocal spree of superfluous information.

"What?" Gibbs shrugged defensively.

What the hell had the other man even been talking about? Fifteenth century something or other and -

"You just smiled."

Well, yeah. Because he'd been thinking about the lower curve of a certain former Secret Service agent's left breast and how long he'd spent sliding his tongue along it before she'd slapped at his shoulder in whimpered impatience.

"I do that sometimes, Duck." He tamped down another round of the movement that had suddenly made the other man so suspicious. "It's sorta reflexive. Implies humor."

"I meant to yourself, Jethro." Ducky's voice took on that lecturing professor tone, the one that went airy with accent and diplomatically more educated. "That wasn't meant for an audience. It was the result of an internal dialogue."

"An internal… what's your point?"

The shorter of the two cocked his head in an amused slant, knowing in his voice as he waved fingers loosely between them. "What exactly were you thinking about?"

"Why'd you call me down here?" Gibbs shunted back with a shake of the head. "I don't have any open cases."

Mallard leaned his upper body forward in a short swaying before his body straightened again, a thoughtful movement made before he continued. "Anthony says you didn't come in from Andrews."

He blew out a breath meant to stall, aimed for some sort of patience. Came up a little short on the rebound, though. Stalled on the two yard line. Pinged off the goal post. Nearly patient, but not really. "I didn't."

"So you went home?"

He just slowly leaned the older man a glaring glance, holding it as Ducky gave a smirk in response.

"Did you see Caitlin last night?" The fall of her name off the other man's lips was softer and more respectfully reverent than expected.

So he let the glaring drop passive, keeping perfectly still into the other man's questioning.

Ducky suddenly grinned into understanding as he watched Gibbs' face stay clear and resiliently calm. "Were you still _seeing_ her this morning, Jethro?"

He finally lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrugging, nearly allowing the smile to wend from his eyes to his lips. "She's pretty easy to look at, Duck."

"I've certainly noticed." Ducky dipped between them as he adjusted his glasses, keeping his eyes aimed up in the younger man's direction. "Again, did you see Caitlin last night?"

"Most all of her, yeah." He confessed as he let his hip bank into the nearest table, wiping idly against the shined and polished up metal.

"Exactly which part did you miss?"

He gave up another shrug but then shook his head tightly back and forth in negation, letting his smile go full tilt as Mallard bust out a full laugh.

"Right." Ducky agreed easily. "That's what I thought. You don't miss a target, Jethro."

"So you didn't actually have anything to tell me?" He asked quietly into the way the older man was still casting a bemused glance over him.

"That smile will give you away." The medical examiner had already started slowly turning back toward the autopsy table he'd been huddled over. "I'd avoid Abigail unless you intend to discuss last night's events in greater detail than you just did."

Gibbs pressed hard off the table and toward the doors, marginally slowing his gait as they banked open for him, "I'm not discussing it at all."

"That may be your intent." Ducky blithely called after him. "And good luck with it."

"Gibbs never made it home last night." He caught her back quickly from edging around the stairs, nearly tipping her off balance as he tucked her back around from the view of the bullpen.

* * *

"Tony… why…" Kate slowly lifted her hand from the way he was still loosely linked around her wrist, shaking her head into him with a half smirk. "What?"

"I'm saying he never made it home. He's wearing one of the shirts he had with him. Not the one he wore yesterday, but it is one of the ones he took to Kansas so he's dressing out of his overnight." DiNozzo's voice was ramping right through his own theory, one of his hands moving expressively as he swayed farther toward her and dropped his tone in implication. "Didn't shave either. He dumps disposables out of his ditty bag before coming home. Less weight to carry. If he'd gone home, he woulda had a razor."

She had to give him far more credit that she already had. He was terrifically observant sometimes – and especially when it regarded something that entertained or interested him. And it seemed Gibbs, in general, greatly interested him. There was an obviously implicit relationship between the two of them that transcended just co-workers. It wasn't just a mentor thing, nor just familial. There was a subtly distinct understanding between the two men that had been obvious within the first twenty four hours of meeting them. And she could still see the glittered brightness of that connection in the younger man's eyes.

"You pay attention to what clothing he takes with him on overnight trips?" She taunted at him, keeping a wide smile over her lips as she lifted her head into DiNozzo's leaning.

"He's got a rainbow of polos, Kate. It's not hard to keep track of. Friday was burgundy, Saturday was sage, Sunday was - "

"Sage?" She interrupted with a still widening grin.

His eyes flickered over her, the stretch of his shoulders lifting as he rebuffed her amusement and cocked his head. "So where was he, Agent Todd?"

"How would I know?" She shook off with a supposed laziness.

"You're the Secret Super Special agent now." He squinted over her. "I know you know."

She snorted as she lifted her arms into shrugging them across her torso, the paperwork she'd been carrying tucked around her side. "I know it's none of your business."

A flared grin went so brightly over his face that his eyes sheened under the office lighting. "Thought so."

Slimy, smug, conniving little… damn it.

There was no point in trying to lie. Not when he so obviously thought knew the correct answer and had no intention of believing anything else she could say on the matter. And he certainly wasn't going to let it go, not when he knew how close he was to being far too right in his conclusions. He was more like Gibbs than he'd probably like to admit. He'd ride this investigative train until cars derailed right at her feet and she wasn't about to let the situation become a scene.

"That's why he's avoiding Forensics." Tony's height swayed over her as a brightening took his eyes clearer, his head tipping an impish angle. "Because Abby can sniff out a night before like nobody's business. She'd smell you on him the instant he walked in."

"Why are you so completely sure it was me, DiNozzo?" She shook her head slowly back and forth, angling right back into his forward leaning with an exhausted tone. "Could be his redheaded friend."

Tony seemed to question the slightly saddened pout she played into the words, his eyes thinning as he considered the drop of her shoulders and drew his chin up as he considered her quietly. She caught the reflexive wincing that went across his face as he perked a glance down the front of her and then back up, his jaw shying to his left before he slowly shook his head back and forth.

One blink, one blink and a brilliant grin made his admittedly handsome face brighten up completely before his right forefinger tipped toward her and tapped her arm.

"Because he wanted you." DiNozzo murmured quietly over her, his face looking even leaner in his assuredness. "And Gibbs gets what he wants, one way or another."

"You're assuming quite a lot considering he offered me a job before - "

"He wanted you right here. Where he could see you, watch and study you. Learn everything little thing about you." The quiet sincerity of his voice actually surprised her a little, sent her head up higher as he continued with such complete surety in his assessment. "And where are you now, Agent Todd?"

Well… she'd figured there was a grown up somewhere in those little boy smiles and flippant remarks. Crouching small under the supposedly chauvinistic tendencies and playboy whimsy.

She let surprised patience breathe through her smile. "You're still assuming that - "

"He gave you gum – which is a cute little thing he does with women he likes because he thinks it makes him adorable." That same finger lifted toward her in an accusatory waggling. "Said 'please' in front of others. Left all of us here to wonder while he played 'loot-the-armory' with you on Air Force One."

"Tony - "

"Offers you a job, romances you with bayonets." The continued excitement in his tone would have actually been sort of cute if he hadn't been able to deduce more than he should of from next day stubble and a twice worn shirt. "Gets you a different job in the same building, buys you dinner, then who knows what else."

"Are you done?" She asked softly into his pausing, exhaling a sigh when he just blinked her an annoyed look for the interruption.

"Then he steps off a plane at Andrews and unexplainably gives me the slip. Shows up in a pre-worn shirt and a next day shadow, smiling. He does all this, with a secretive little smirking so far unseen by most members of this agency. Bam." Both his hands lifted as though he'd been leading the final sermon at a rousing tent revival, a flickering of humor in his eyes as he drew his head back down toward her and clasped his palms together in taunting. "Now I'm done."

"He was with me." She stepped tidily around him with a smiling nod, keeping the movement lazily relaxed as she passed the base of the stairs and lined her steps along the windows. "He stayed the night."

"You can't lie to me, Kate. I know what's… what?" She could hear the scramble of him up behind just as easily as she could feel the way he leaned up along her side, a little hopped jaunt past her so that he could turn backwards before her again just along the front of his own desk. "What?"

"You heard me, DiNozzo." The hand with the paperwork dropped loosely to her side as she shook her head at him, letting her shoulders relax as she sank into the edge of his own desk.

"Why?!" He shook off sharply, seeming legitimately confused.

Kate felt the smile rise on her lips and she bit into it, "If you don't already have a grasp of the concept I'm really not sure I can explain it to you, Tony."

"No, I mean… you're gonna get offended regardless. It doesn't matter which way I turn this line of questioning."

"Probably." She agreed with swift ease and a shift of one leg over the other, noting how surreptitiously he'd managed to sneak a look down the shift of her knee. Predictable, but well masked in the way his glance circled back up.

"If I ask why he would, or why you would…" He blinked before raising his head, angling it back as he searched the air around him as a beat of breath rang off him. "How'd I end up in this large hole? Did I dig it myself?"

She actually laughed, let it run off her throat as she caught a surprisingly familiar set of shoulders leaning off the elevator – and moving up fast. "Very quickly, I might add."

"So the functionally mute, perpetually grouchy, mainlining caffeine and unapologetically tactless thing does it for ya, Kate?"

"Lemme put this a way you can understand it." She cradled warmly up into his teasing, letting her voice have a little hum to it as she intentionally ignored letting her glance shift in Gibbs' direction. "He had me at 'privét'."

"I don't get it."

"'Hello', DiNozzo." Gibbs' voice was a low and nearly grating interjection from behind the other man.

Tony's eyes thinned at her accusatorily before he shrugged into turning toward the older man's silent approach, his voice lifting into feigned amusement. "Hey, Boss."

Gibbs didn't even really blink into the joking tone the other man had breathed out, his head dipping, "The personnel file?"

"Oh, right." Tony snapped a file off his desk from beside her, a glaring glance pinned on her before he smirked back in his boss's direction. "Yates is waiting for you in the conference room. Just got in about twenty minutes ago."

"Thank you." He was intentionally ignoring looking at her as he flicked through the file and she could tell, her head dipping a little to interestedly watch the forced exhalation from his lungs.

She didn't necessarily blame him.

She was intentionally forcing herself not to completely smile her head up in his direction.

"You want me with?" Tony asked gently into the stilled quietness that had dusted down between them.

"No, I don't." Gibbs exhaled as he lifted his jaw, aiming the folder toward the stairs with a swing of his arm before he finally let his eyes lifted hooded toward hers. "Kate?"

"Yeah, in five." She nodded slowly into watching him, her head angling slightly higher into the way he inhaled slowly through his nose as she lifted her own paperwork. "I need to drop this off."

He was searching for patience, grasping at it with intentionally evened breathing and a parade rest stance in his shoulders and spine. And his eyes were a blue that was mixed up somewhere between partially annoyed and decidedly amused. He was… ruffled.

The supposedly unflappable Leroy Jethro Gibbs was, actually, slightly unnerved.

"This is your show, Todd."

To be fair, so was she. Because the fact Tony was so intentionally pried up between the two of them made her feel a little skin flushed and tingling near defensive.

Still… he was cute in how intentionally passive he was trying (and failing) to be.

There wasn't a damn passive bone in his body and just the attempt was obviously rasping on him.

She caught the way Tony made and exaggerated swing toward her for a response, his glance dropping over her as she shrugged, "No, I'm not the investigative interrogator, remember?"

"But you're the one who will be working with Yates, not me." He countered into angling his head toward the stairs, his body rigging tighter as he finally found the switch he'd needed to flip – because whatever it was he'd summoned sleeked the entire length of him as he exhaled. "Let's go."

"I need to - "

"You're not the mail guy, Kate." He caught into the folder she'd lifted in explanation, fingers trapping it from her as he swung it toward a passing employee's chest without a sideways glance. "Upstairs. CI. Go."

"Stay." She countered sharply toward the suddenly jolted and startled young man, her fingers slowly prying the folder back with a stretch of her hand as she glared into Gibbs' space. "Could you not send my paperwork into a secure area with… what's your name?"

"Freddy." He was absolutely flabbergasted and she would have found it amusing if she'd been able to ignore the fact that both of them were annoyingly smirking at her. "HR."

"Yeah." She shook her head slowly in negation, giving him a small smile of appreciation as she straightened her spine into Gibbs' glance and Tony's outright laughter. "Thanks, Freddy. I've got it."

"I'll take it." The chippy tone of voice DiNozzo used scraped right up her spine and she turned up into the way both of them were caging around her, their faces damn near equally impish as she glanced between the two of them.

Hell, they were suddenly a pair. Somehow, somewhere in the middle of the older man's shift back to sturdy and supposedly stoic, Tony had become his right hand again. She was obviously their combined target and the joint intent was to flummox her right into blushing. No goddamn doubt. They were… exasperatingly adorable. The difference in age between them suddenly nothing in comparison to how keenly the both of them seemed to need to see her blush.

DiNozzo was definitely learning far more from the older man than just the finer points of criminal investigation.

He was learning how to be a pain right directly in her ass.

"Oh, I don't think so, DiNozzo. You can't access half the CI offices." She intentionally slanted tighter into the front of the younger man, enjoying the fact that he banked his shoulders back with a nervy and cautious glancing toward Gibbs. "I appreciate it, though."

"How is she CI?" Tony nudged into the other man's arm a beat before taking a step back from her leaning. "Boss, we're Criminal Investigations."

Gibbs wasn't gonna save him – not yet.

She knew that just from the interestedly wicked half smile that had suddenly claimed one side of the older man's mouth as she took another step tighter. "Counter Intelligence, Tony."

"I know that, Kate." DiNozzo finally blocked back up toward her, straightening his shoulders as he angled his jaw jerkily. "I'm making a point about excessive anachronisms and being unnecessarily snooty."

It wasn't just about making Tony nervously gauge his boss with furtive glances and a concern that the older man would take a hard slap into the back of his head.

It was about the bemused lift of his palm along her hip as he intentionally backed her up from stalking on the younger man, his eyes grazing over her face with a knowing but marginally proud glance.

It was, most of all, just about the possessive way his entire palm had heeled her by pressing into her pelvic bone in the exact same spot he'd let his mouth linger hours before.

She'd been craving that touch all morning. Using DiNozzo's habit of running at the mouth to get it had seemed like the most likely avenue of arrival. And she sure as hell wasn't about to regret the fact that it had worked so well.

"Confidential Informants too. You." His fingers pressed her back a little farther from the younger agent's space, his voice hazing low and raking off his throat. "Five minutes."

"I'll be there." She nodded up into the way he was watching her face.

Gibbs gave her a sideways look before nodding and stepping toward the stairs, keeping his pace slow and even.

"He really use Russian on you?" The older man's exit had apparently allowed Tony carte blanche to annoy the unholy crap out of her once again. "That's… really? And it worked?"

"That's not what did it." She stepped slowly back, tucking her paperwork into her chest with a loose shrugging.

"Really?"

"Really." Kate nodded with a growing smile.

Tony lifted palms and his voice after her as she turned toward the base of the stairs. "Gonna elucidate?"

"Not a chance."

* * *

"How'd you do that?"

He shot a sideways glance into the way she upped her steps faster so that she could overtake him on the stairs. "Do what?"

"Completely ignore the fact that four hours ago you were..." The blatant drop of her voice met with the implication the lift of her shoulder made, "strategically mapping southern terrain."

Mapping hell, he'd been staking claim.

He grazed an appreciative groaning up along her side as he turned his head into her questioning, "I shut it off."

Kate thinned a quick glance into the way he'd tugged slower along the railing, staying a step below her as she nearly broached the top of the stairs. "You lying piece of - "

"I did." He chuckled up into the sudden vehemence in her voice, swaying his head into a self amused shrugging. "I turned it off."

Sure. Except that he was sturdily focused on every movement of her, every shift of her head and curve of her lips. And, holy hell, bright eyes.

He hadn't necessarily turned it off. He'd just guarded it as well as the rest of him.

Her jaw went a little lower as she dropped a glance down the front of him and then tipped him a questioning, "Which team?"

"What?" An actual sort of surprise flinched his eyes thinner as he leaned up and forward.

"Which sports team roster were you running in your head?"

A near smile tugged on him and he shook his head back and forth to intentionally avoid letting it complete itself. "I wasn't."

"Mmm." Kate smiled a nodding over him, the sound she'd made rife with a haughty little sway of disbelief that had his brows lifting in humor. "Uhkay."

"I was mentally classifying the various parts of a four and half inch howitzer, twentieth century British ordnance." There was such a distinct softness to his voice that she had to cage herself back from leaning farther over him as he sighed. "Is it harassment if I comment on how fantastic your six o'clock looks in that particular skirt?"

"Yes, Agent Gibbs." She clipped her shoulders back into the slow blink he gave her before her heel lifted back to catch the top step. "It is."

"Understood, Agent Todd." Gibbs let his arm rest relaxed the rail, fingers aiming up behind her with a dip of his jaw. "Ladies first."

She snorted into turning up the last step, pressing off to head toward the upstairs offices. "Eyes front, Marine."

"They are."

* * *

"What is that?"

He flinched into the bittered sound of seriousness in Abby's usually higher pitched tone, following the look of scrutiny she was lifting toward the stairs. "That? Oh, that? That is… complete pandemonium."

"I'm not kidding." Her pigtails were making her concern obvious, the way they shifted with the sharp jerk of her head. "That's - "

"Flirtation. Attraction." Tony murmured into loosely letting his arms cross over his chest, shoulders relaxing as he watched how easily Todd just crowned over Gibbs' lifted jaw as the two of them sparred at the top of the stairs. "Intimacy. Sexual tension."

Whatever they were back-and-forth-ing about? He was letting her win - and that itself was damn disturbing. He was just letting her lean over the relaxed sway of him as he angled into the railing and just amusedly lifted his jaw into her advance. He was sure as hell enjoying it too.

"Tony - "

"Or a lack of tension, actually. Pretty sure they've solved that particular equation. I haven't, though. Can't…" His fingers waved off his forearm a little in confused explanation as he lifted his head higher into watching Kate finish the stairs and turn off toward the CI offices. "meet the ends up, so to speak."

"When did this happen?"

She wasn't necessarily jealous. He could hear that much in the weak way she asked the question, her eyes trained upward to where Gibbs was still slacked into the railing. He searched quietly over her face for a moment, noting the perplexed way her features had gone soft. She seemed actually worried. Defensive. Maybe a twinge suspicious. All the wonderfully and primarily sweet things she could be when it came to Jethro Gibbs' well-being.

If he hadn't already been a little jealous of the Boss-Man, he sure as hell was now.

And he hated it a little when she didn't play at teasing with him – because it implied that she was far more emotional than she was actually letting on.

"Last night." Tony intentionally turned himself up into her space, tipping his head to draw her attention down with a forced smile. "The question is why did this happen, Abs. Why?"

"Why what?" She shook her head at him. "He likes her."

"Look at Gibbs. Now look at me." He lifted his palm up over his shoulder and then dropped it down into his chest, a teasing wink coming off him as Abby cocked him a dry look. "Why Gibbs?"

"Why not Gibbs?" She defended the older man instantly, her lips quirking up a little protective pout. "To the right woman? He's prime real estate, Tony. Trust me."

He played into her posture. "Mmmm. Explain."

"Like, _prime_." Abby taunted back, finally leaning into his teasing and the banter he was using to bring her back to her usual self. "Think oceanside. Or a villa. Penthouse."

"For the love of little handicapped children, Abby." His hands clapped her arms and shook her hard in place, face slacked into a sudden deadpan mortification that had her wide eyed. "Do not _ever_ reference Gibbs and Penthouse in the same sentence again."

* * *

She watched the eased way he pressed out the chair for the other woman before slacking back into his own. His eyes met hers a moment before they tripped down her and turned back toward Yates. "You've been under cover more than not in the last year, Cassie."

The darker woman was furtively studying her and Kate just kept a shaded smile on her lips as she leaned up along the back of the chair opposite Gibbs. "Yeah. Keeps me out of trouble."

"You've volunteered for the last three ops?" He led along quietly, obviously already knowing he was correct.

"It's fun." The other agent finally flacked him a full on smile. "You should try it more often. It's liberating."

Kate watched his face as he tipped his head angling, almost boyish in the movement as he cocked the other woman a look of incredulity. "You know how I liberate."

"Kuwait knows how you like to liberate, Gibbs."

He chuckled easily into the flat broadness of Yates' retort, nodding over the closed personnel file he'd set at a perfect ninety pitch angle to the way he was sitting into the table. His fingers tapped easily to the front of it but he didn't open it, instead just shrugging in such an affable and unoffending movement that the grin he lifted at her seemed innocently friendly. Nearly even sweet, if his eyes hadn't been a shade darker than normal.

"Why haven't you tried to move off your team?" His voice was just as innocuous as the rest of his body language, so completely curious rather than cautious.

"To what? Your MCRT?" Yates stayed tightly wound even in the face of his calmness, her shoulders still stacked up tightly as her dark glance bounced between the two of them. "Yeah, right."

"Don't assume anything, Cass." There was a threaded seriousness to the response as he gave her a friendly look, something more true and surprisingly affectionate. "I want you to look at this."

His hand lifted in Kate's direction without a turning of his head, long fingers patiently spread as she handed over the paperwork she'd gotten from the Director's office before entering the meeting. A blink of thanks flirted in her direction before he slid the papers toward the other agent, palm lifting as a welcome for her to read. She flashed a glance between the two of them again before she started skimming the papers, her darker skin tone leading how brown to black her eyes went as she frowned over what she was reading. Her head shook minutely and quickly, surprise raking over her features as she sucked in a quick breath.

"This is insane, Gibbs." She was still staring down over the papers, her fingers flexed in an arch over the second page as her head jerked up. "You've gone completely insane. Are you serious with this?"

"Have you known me to joke about these sorts of things?"

A derisive snort broke off the other woman quickly, her brow arching hard. "Sometimes, yeah."

"It's on the level." He assured with a slow smile that was very suddenly obviously honest and Kate blinked into watching it grace off him.

He liked this agent. It was obvious in how gently he'd loosened his body and lulled his voice. A fraternal affection, or something maybe even more paternal, had completely wiped away any legitimate interrogation tactics. It was obvious that he didn't need them in this case and he respected the other woman enough to just drop the use of them. Yates was someone he'd already decided he respected and appreciated and Kate realized that he'd decided it long before Tony had even handed over the other woman's file. This was history. A history she just didn't have the background information on.

"International counter intelligence agents involved in high risk covert operations." She forced herself to look away from him and into Cassie's response, watching the other woman shake her head as she spoke. "Leave it to the Navy to use ten words to just say 'spy games'. And, I'm sorry, who the hell are you?"

Kate just blinked an admittedly impressed smile into the sharp way Yates had so succinctly drawn complete and unapologetic attention in her direction, a note of sourness in the other agent's tone.

"Possibly your future control officer." Gibbs culled out between the two of them with a voice made to curl comfort into the room before he exhaled. "So cut the attitude, huh?"

Kate kept her voice as equally soft. "I think she meant my name, Gibbs."

"I think I was getting there, Todd." He shot back as he picked up Yates' personnel file, letting his shoulders lean the chair back at a pitch as he flicked it open and shifted it a little farther away.

Both women smirked into the way he still squinted over the paperwork and Cassie lifted her hand off the table to draw his attention. "Control?"

Gibbs flicked to the next page in a manner that said he didn't really much care to scrape through all of it, that he already knew most of what he needed to know. "A handler. CI consists of small operations teams. No more than three or four people. All operative agents, one control."

"You're dead serious."

"You think I called you up here for a human resources sort of chat?" He closed the folder he'd been palming open, lifting it angling across the table with a nod. "Not my bailiwick, Yates."

Kate took the folder lightly at first, catching the tug he pulled on it as he caught her glance, a quick smile rising in the color of his eyes before he let go with a nod.

Sure, it was a teasing of a sort, but it was also his silently implied assent.

"This is the Secret Service pinch hitter that everyone's been talking about?" Yates tossed off between them as Kate flicked open the folder, blinking down over the other woman's file slowly. "You're shorter than I thought you'd be."

"I make up for it in many other ways." She murmured as she considered the clean record and the commendations that went along with it – and at least one of them had been filed by him. Surprise, surprise. He was into every little thing in this agency.

No wonder he'd had no qualms about instantly throwing her a lifeline of a job.

"No doubt." Cassie angled at her with a still cagey tone.

She furtively smiled deeper as she continued reading over the information, mildly distracted by the knock that echoed softly off the door. Kate intentionally kept her head down as Gibbs okayed the interruption, reading over the basics of the other woman's most recent operation.

"Sorry, Boss." DiNozzo's voice was quietly apologetic and she lifted her head into his seriousness, impressed by how calmly professional he'd become. "Metro just called us in. Hinky home invasion. Petty Officer dead. "

"Yeah, got it." Gibbs was already shifting up from his chair, pressing away from the meeting without any outward sign of regret at having to leave it. Kate watched him nudge the chair back, his glance fleeting along hers before he dipped his head toward Yates and smiled affably between them.

"Agent Kate Todd, Agent Cassie Yates." His hand was waving idly between them as DiNozzo toed the door open wider for him. "Play nice, ladies."

She followed his exit with a half glaring, doing her best to ignore the rapid wiggle of Tony's fingers as he waved goodbye at her.

The door shutting left her as the sole recipient of Cassie's scrutiny. Wonderful.

The other woman was obviously suspicious of her, regardless of her humor with Gibbs.

"So, this is… suitably awkward." She aimed a breathy laugh in the other woman's direction, closing the file in her fingers.

Yates offered her a cocked brow and a look that said this was actually acceptably and expectedly normal. "How long have you known Agent Gibbs?"

"About two weeks."

"Yeah." The darker of the two just smirked. "I guess you would think so then."

"He's not coming back." Kate shook off the assumption as she let the personnel file drop to the table, angling it so that it would land just aside from the papers in front of the other woman.

"Probably not, no." Yates waved loose fingers over everything in front of her. "This is legit?"

"I'm not completely sure anything around here is actually legitimate." She felt a sway of frustration in her own voice and she let it continue, a huff of breath coming off her as she met Cassie's eyes. "This place is…"

"Agreed." Yates grinned and it seemed as though it was the first time they'd actually found a connection, a bridge for the gap. "So what are we talking when it comes to training?"

"About six months probationary training." Kate pressed away from the chair, swaying her steps around the other woman's back and toward the door. "Team members would rotate between training agents."

"I'm in the middle of an op right now, Agent Todd." Yates threw off to the side, her body loosening back into the chair. "I can't just - "

"You can, actually." The interruption was intentionally quick but equally as soft and Kate dipped her head with a smile, trying to keep them balanced. "I can make it happen if you want out for this."

" _You_ can make it happen? On whose authority?"

She bit down to keep from smiling any wider. "The Director's."

"Got it." Cassie was slacking the chair back, intentionally letting it swing back and forward and back again. "Agent Secret Service has some kick in those heels."

"Some." She let her body relax, head tipping into watching the other woman's shifting, smiling as she nodded. "Next stop is his office if you're interested."

"Gibbs hasn't given his 'all clear' yet." Yates waved off as she shook her head back, letting it grind back into the chair, supposedly lazy. "You think I don't know that's why he was in here?"

"But he did, Yates." Kate felt herself laugh into it before she waved her hand toward the door. "Are you coming?"

"Do I get a chance to consider this?" The other agent had jerked the chair to a stop, shunting her body forward to stand.

"Hear him out, okay?" She pointed an aiming hand toward the paperwork and blinked the other woman a sturdy glance until Yates got the point and scooped up both files. "At least get all the information. And then consider."

"You really turn down the MCRT?" Cassie was looping her bag over her shoulder with a shaking of the head, paperwork tucked into her chest. "That's… why?"

She leaned the door open slowly, letting her body weigh into the edge of it as Cassie passed through it. "I got a better offer."

"For this?"

Among other things, him included, sure.

* * *

Driving helped. Driving was what he needed. Driving something other than into her.

Because, regardless of the fact he'd showered, he could still smell the tweak of lavender on himself and it was rattling his lungs up.

And thank Christ he'd gotten out of that room when he had.

He intentionally hadn't lingered long enough in her apartment to watch her dress and the tailored sleekness of the pencil skirt she'd chosen after he left had created enough of a thud from his chest to the bottom of his stomach that he'd been surprised nobody else had heard it drop down.

But maybe somebody had – because DiNozzo was being uncharacteristically quiet in the next seat over and his eyes were a jumbled haze of blues and greens. His long hand was jacked tightly into the bar above the window for balance. The stretch of his fingers was curled around it to lever his weight on each corner they banked around. Gibbs chanced a glance to the side, taking in the perplexed and oddly thoughtful look that had usurped the younger man's features.

"Spit it out before you choke on it, DiNozzo."

Tony just shrugged strangely, his head kept forward as his face contorted in a slight confusion, "Abby called you 'prime real estate'. It's creeping me out."

Gibbs squinted forward again, taking the next rounded corner twice as fast as he probably should have. "I don't think I wanna know why."

"I don't think you do either, Boss."

He exhaled through pursed up lips, his head taking a quick jerk back and forth. "This isn't gonna be a discussion, DiNozzo. Are we clear? It's not something to be discussed."

"It already is, Gibbs." Tony shot back tightly, his head snapping a turn that proved the sincerity in his voice before he exhaled. "But I get it. I'll shut it down."

"You started it."

"No, I just messed with Kate a little." The younger man tweaked defensive, his shoulder swaying closer to his own window. "And, maybe, chatted with Abby."

"DiNozzo." He should have curbed the volume but it'd snapped out of him before he'd really thought to tamp it down.

"I'll shut it down, Boss." Tony murmured slowly, his head still turned as he studied the older man. "It's a non-story. Soon as we get back."

"We do work in a government building." Gibbs ground off, shaking his head tightly as he executed a questionable lane change. "And my business is not, actually, any of yours."

"I get it." The other man's tone was a little whipped, quietly shushed.

And he actually felt a little guilty for being so snappish, let his lungs empty out as he turned a quick look aside and then back to the road. "She hold her own?"

"Yeah, she did." Humor flicked back through the other agent's response. "Scrappy little thing."

Gunning the engine a little harder into a near whining had been, admittedly, completely intentional.

"Sorry. Shutting up, Boss."

* * *

He hadn't actually put much stock in Tony's days-ago description of her being buried by paperwork in Autopsy. It had been a charming little mental image to chew on, sure, but he hadn't let himself much past the bite when they'd been working a case. The reality of seeing it on her, current case or none, was more than just a taste. It was the whole goddamn plate. The fact she'd taken the jacket off to show bare arms and the silky sleeveless but fitted shirt was a garnish.

"So it is true." He murmured, knowing her attention had been drawn by the doors but realizing that she was intentionally ignoring his entrance by frowning her focus tighter over whatever it was she was reading.

She was twisting a pen around idly in her fingers and he decided it looked like a movement she probably made often. Probably while drawing, distractedly twining a pencil around as she considered her work. He realized as he stepped forward that watching her draw was something he hadn't been able to finagle yet – but it was a goal he was ready to bump to the head of the line when it came to her. Especially considering the cute little annoyed noise she made in her throat as he approached, pen lifted to aim sharply in his direction. She was implying silence as she finished whatever it was she was studying, ordering his distraction still. He quieted, didn't say anything else, but that sure as hell didn't stop him from stepping sidelong into the way she was perched up on the edge of one of the metal tables. There was a hell of a lot of light in her hazel to caramel eyes as she finally lifted her head into his presence.

"I may want Yates if you're not gonna use her." He let his palm lay flat to the table beside her as he sent a look down the way she had one leg crossed over the other. "Seems I still need a replacement team member."

She wasn't hiding whatever she'd been reading, it was still loosely laid flat across the top of her thigh. Which meant she didn't care if he saw it - which also meant it wasn't really of all that much interest to him.

"I want a lot of things, Agent Gibbs." Her glance had dipped over his mouth and stayed there as her empty hand blindly reached to her opposite side to lift one of Ducky's teacups. "Life's full of little disappointments."

"I didn't think DiNozzo was being serious about this."

Just one touch along her calf. One touch wouldn't kill their professionalism – at least not right away. Slow murder, really. Like an incremental poisoning, or a lack of oxygen. His fingers swiped up her leg and off as he lifted his head, meeting the expectant but sardonic smirk she was laying into the edge of the cup.

"I'm still not completely comfortable upstairs." She spoke after a slow sip and then lifted the cup a little in explanation. "Plus Ducky spoils me."

"You need to own your office, Caitlin." It sounded more like an order than he'd maybe meant it to, but he went with it. It was downright true, whether she'd like it or not. "You need to own the office to which you've been assigned and manage the employees who need to report to you."

"And I will," her retort was clearly the only thing she planned to say on the matter and he thinned a look at her, "when I'm ready."

Gibbs took in the way she'd curled the cup up into her chest, keeping the sweet smelling heat of it to herself as a bit of defense. "He is spoiling you, isn't he?"

An innocent smile flushed over her face. "Very much."

"He likes you." He nodded into her proud agreement. "Very much."

He stilled for a moment, keeping hold of the patiently warm way she was watching him. Her eyes were still brightened up under the flooding lights of the large room and the upward tilt of her jaw seemed too damn welcoming to him. As though he had no reason not to drop his mouth over hers and take the cup out of her hands and spread her legs back apart while he dug close between them. Hands first, fingers then mouth, mouth back up while he pulled her knees up and buried himself so tightly into her that -

"How's the case?" She implied his exact reasoning for not doing so, as though she'd seen the conflict on him. She probably had. She was too astute.

"I was looking for Ducky." The explanation felt a little gritty off his throat. "Sit-rep."

Kate just shook her head in explanation, "He hasn't gotten back yet."

The drink she took from the cup had him watching her mouth before he finally sighed off. "The decision not to kiss you right now is completely professional. Not personal."

She snorted down the swallow, wiping her lips on a nodding laugh. "Completely understood."

"However…"

"There's a 'however'?" Her smile went so excitedly bright, wide and unabashed as she lifted her head into how tightly he was leaned over her. It was cuter than he'd expected.

"There is." He breathed an unavoidable laugh into the words.

"Well," she nodded as she shut the file and leaned forward expectantly, her arms wrapping into her chest as she pressed in her leg, "enlighten me, Agent Gibbs."

"However," he answered as he pressed away from her leaning, avoiding the urge to stretch right back into her, "I have been kissing you repeatedly most of the day."

There was something significantly pretty in how thin her eyes went when her smile turned so knowing. "You mean in your head?"

"I do." He agreed as he forced his palms open and slack to his sides.

A small sound came up her throat before she nodded, "Sleeping in your chair tonight?"

"Probably. Kate, I told you - "

"I was just gonna suggest that you do some stretching before and after." It was mostly concern in her voice and not the accusation he'd expected from her. "You're completely knotted up. I could tell last night."

That was because she seemed to have an unexplainable fascination with his shoulders and down the stretch of his back and while he hadn't necessarily understood it, he also hadn't argued with her finding multiple reasons to put her hands there.

One of his favorites had been when she'd curled her palms up the backs of his shoulders and dug desperately higher on him as he'd been teasingly pulling out of her.

"I don't…" He didn't stretch – at least not in the way she meant. But then, she knew that. The smug smile that was perking her lips proved that. "Good night, Kate."

"Night, Gunny." He could help grinning into the fact that she just flicked him a wink before turning her glance back over her paperwork.

She was… she just… damn.

She was just as impossible as she'd accused him of being, all while sipping tea and seeming professionally untouchable.

Impossible. Maybe more perfectly so than he'd expected.

* * *

Maybe it'd been a bad idea. Like, too many Margarita's on Girl's Night Out sort of bad.

But at least Abby wasn't looking at her like she'd decided drunken karaoke was a _really_ good idea. Rather, just like she was the one more likely to vomit after this.

Probably true, actually…

Kate blew out a breath and just let it go, knowing the squinted glance the scientist was giving her wasn't going anywhere unless she was completely honest. And groveled a little. "You want to like me."

Or, more than likely, a lot. A lot of groveling.

She'd known earlier, when Abby had shunted her off in the bullpen, that the tentative compatibility they'd found had somehow dissolved.

She'd already decided to blame DiNozzo. Even if she knew it wasn't actually his fault.

"I don't make a habit of disliking people when I don't actually know them." Abby told her tightly, her head snapping back after she'd spoken so that her attention was fixed toward her computer screen.

"Exactly." Kate stepped into the agreement but slanted her leaning toward the table behind the other woman, let her body sink into it. "That's exactly what I mean. You want to like me. You tend to give most everyone a chance. You're very open minded, Abby."

"What's your point?" Abby still hadn't turned back around, just tipped her head and voice sharply to the side.

"I'm just wondering why you're acting like you don't actually like me." Kate murmured quietly. "Unless you really _don't_ actually like me."

"I like you." A defensive and half guilty swing caught the other woman around, leaning her back into the computer desk with both hands gripped into the edge. "You seem nice."

"I am nice." Kate agreed slowly, keeping it as inoffensive as possible.

Abby chewed into her cheek as she shrugged. "And you've got a pretty good sense of humor."

"I try to." She finally smiled into the way Abby was studying her across the gap between them, both their bodies leaned away from each other but in a more relaxed manner than before. "It's not a jealousy thing."

"Jealous of… oh, no." A nearly flushing laugh bubbled off the younger woman, one of her hands lifting and batting between them. "I may recognize that he's an intelligent and attractive and funny guy but - "

"But it's just not the sort of relationship the two of you have." Kate concluded on a slow and quiet nodding.

"Not at all." There was such an honest verve living on and around the other woman. It was so ridiculously refreshing, so innocently perfect to how she interacted with others. "Gibbs is… Gibbs. He's special."

"He said the exact same thing about you." Kate shrugged it out, finally feeling comfortable enough to just lift herself up against the edge of the table, catching the tipped smirk Abby gave her in response.

She met the other woman's half smile, exhaling slowly as she took in the interestedly bemused look the scientist was giving her.

"You're his spotter, aren't you?" She asked quietly across the space between them. "You detect, observe, confirm."

A squint to Abby's eyes threatened to shatter the good humor they had managed to bridge up between them. She looked as though she were considering all the implications of the question. After a moment she just shrugged a non-committal response.

"And that's what worries you?" Kate let her feet swing a little before she crossed one leg over the other, palms curled to the edge of the table. "You weren't there to do any of those things in this situation?"

A slow shake of the head preceded the softest, most possibly murderous of responses, "What worries me is that you seem way too capable of being able to hurt him and you're just not allowed to hurt him."

And there it was. The endgame response. The stone wall.

Maybe they could be friends, sure, but she would never receive this level of protective custody from this particular woman. She was Jethro's, first and last. She had no doubt that regardless of whatever ending there was to this odd beginning, Abby would be firmly on the side of Gibbs.

But, really, she was surprised by how comforting she found it rather than threatening. That he'd been able to draw such a stalwart and fierce loyalty out of such an innocently intelligent woman? He had to be doing something right. He had to be as loyal and fierce in his affection himself or a woman like Abby Scuito would have seen the wall right through him.

"Trust me, in this situation? It's far more likely that it'll be the other way around." She offered quietly, her glance dropping down as she worked her fingers along the hem of her skirt. "And you're thinking twenty steps ahead, Abby. It's not that serious."

"He's serious." The surety in the other woman's tone drew her head back up and the only reason she didn't smile was because Abby still looked so distractedly concerned. "And the fact you don't see that is exactly why you're probably completely wrong."

Kate dipped her head at a Devil's Advocate angle. "We've known each other less than a month."

"Exactly." The scientist pressed off the computer desk with a forward leaning, her head dipping farther forward. "God, Kate… he _likes_ you."

"I _like_ him." She responded evenly, honestly, terrifyingly bare to her own ears.

"I know." A platform heel struck hard into the flooring as Abby's voice went stronger and louder. "That's… you're not allowed to hurt him."

She would have smiled again if Abby wasn't so clearly serious in the unwritten rule she kept repeating. "Bottom line, huh?"

"As in, deep-end-of-the-pool bottom." Sciuto murmured quietly, almost sadly.

"Give me a chance, Abby. I'm not gonna hurt him on purpose." She kept her voice soft, kept her movements mostly still and her shoulders unthreatening in how lowly relaxed they were. "That's not who I am. Do you really think he'd like me at all if he thought that?"

"Not at all."

"No. He wouldn't." He was far too smart for that and the both of them knew it.

It was that last line of reasoning that had Abby's hands stretching backwards and catching into the computer table before she slacked back against it, a thoughftul look pouting up her lips. Her eyes came up and there was most of an apology in them and Kate just shrugged a sad smile back, her breathing sighing back to even.

"What're you working on?" She nodded her jaw toward the other woman's computer.

Abby turned her head aside but didn't really look to the screen. "Just finishing up a couple things for Pacci."

"Chris already went home. You're hovering." Kate surmised quietly, levering off the table and evenly onto her heels.

"Maybe."

She smirked after the scientist's nearly grudging response. "Hungry?"

Abby just turned her back a semi interested look that matched the half effort of the shrug she made.

"I'm starving." Kate waved quickly between them as she stepped forward and tried another smile, bringing them closer with a careful shift of movement. "Serious craving for Pad Thai."

"You like Thai?" Now that little sparkle in the other woman's eyes? That was pay dirt. Girls-night-foodie-time had never necessarily been a bad idea. They'd just taken the longest and most uncomfortable route possible to get there.

"I'm in." Kate tipped toward her playfully. "If you are."

"I need a few to finish up."

"Half an hour?" She was nodding into the way Abby had swung back toward her computer, fingers already at work against the keys.

"That works." Abby's focus was getting engulfed, her head dipping once in agreement.

Kate just smiled wider into how frenetically the other woman had jumped into finishing whatever tests she was running."Meet you upstairs?"

"Okay."

"Abby?" She tested a touching hand flat to the other woman's shoulder blade, her head angling toward the tech as Sciuto's fingers slowed their dance. "You're a good spotter."

Distinctly proud eyes met hers as Abby grinned, "I know that."

* * *

She lost focus on the buttoning of her coat, fingers fidgeting against the front of it as she stalled on the landing and completely stilled her body. An interested smile tugged at her lips as she forced her fingers back into movement, head lifted as she watched the animated way Tony was explaining something in front of Gibbs' desk. The younger man was talking rapidly as he aimed toward the large screen to his right. Gibbs seemed completely unimpressed, his body slacked wearily back in his own chair as he responded with a shrugging and what seemed like very few words.

The unprecedented lift of his head into her watching actually startled her a little, a flush rising her throat as she realized she'd been staring at him. And the particular half smirk he let up toward the stairs as he busted her out on it and Tony continued talking to him, that smirk was warmly familiar. Although, the last time she'd seen it he'd been the one leaning over her - and murmuring decidedly dirty indelicate things in Russian.

Kate blushed down into it and shook her head ruefully, turning her steps along the second set of stairs. She caught the slow turn of his head and the back sway of his chair as he slowly levered it to the side to watch her leave. Her fingers lifted in a loose wave that he blinked so deliciously slowly into, his head angling into the back of the chair gently. The affectionate nod he made in her direction was the last sight of too blue eyes before he swiveled the chair back toward DiNozzo.

"Sunan is gonna be so excited to meet a new friend." Abby's voice was an excited interruption, catching her head up as she neared the elevators.

"Sunan?" Kate lifted her bag higher onto her shoulder, unable to keep from smiling back at the way Abby was turning a look between her and Gibbs' desk.

"Oh, yeah, he loves short brunettes." The tech was already jamming at the call button, a quick shrugging on her as she used the other hand to wave emphatically past Kate's shoulder. "He's gonna give you extras. Like take home."

She turned her glance back, catching the way Gibbs was watching them from a spun around chair, his head tipped as he held back a smile, his fingers stretched up to finally return the wave. "He flirts with Thai food?"

"Sure, yeah." Abby was already stepping into the elevator, fingers out to tug the other woman's jacket when she didn't follow right away. "But since you don't need a take home you'll share, right?"

The last she saw of him was a decidedly surprised look of pleasure.

"Depends on what he's sending home. I'm starving."

* * *

She hadn't seen him in two days. Well, that was stretching the truth a bit. She'd seen him – in the office, in the squadroom, heard his voice carrying over DiNozzo's when he'd obviously lost patience. Heard him soothing on the other man apologetically as they'd headed for the elevator. They'd passed each other in and out of Autopsy twice and both times he'd caught his palm into the edging of the elevator door and waited her out, holding it open for her. Both times he'd murmured that same little hello, let his eyes linger down her before pressing off the door to let it close.

But she hadn't _seen_ him in two days. Not what she wanted to see (and hear and taste and touch) of him.

And it was making her a little twitchy when it came to knowing where to go forward and where to step back in regards to him.

At least until he'd shown up at her door. "It's two in the morning, Gibbs."

"You were on the line with Bahrain forty minutes ago." The long stretch of his arm was caged loosely into her doorframe, hand dropped wearily forward at the wrist as his eyes went completely down the half undressed front of her. "I was in MTAC."

Yeah, she knew he'd been there. She'd known he was at the back of the room just by the arched way half the tech staff had bolted straighter in their chairs and kept surreptitiously glancing aside to the door. Well, she knew it'd been him or Morrow, but she hadn't chanced checking to see which one until she'd finished her video conference.

By the time she'd turned, he'd been gone.

And his desk had been once again empty when she'd left shortly after.

"Need another invitation?" She asked into the looming stillness of him, lifting her fingers into his shirt on a testing touch, following the way his eyes followed her.

"Do I?"

"No." She shook her head, tugging lightly against his shirt before she loosened from it and turned away, leaving him in the doorway.

To his credit, he didn't wait as long to move into her apartment and shut the door as she'd assumed he would. And she smiled when she heard him secure both the locks once again.

The prowling and scowling way he was staring at her as she turned was unnerving (when it wasn't sorta sexy on him). He was intentionally keeping his language limits excruciatingly low, intentionally using the color of his eyes and the way he was studying the entire length of her to rattle her up. He was all rigid shoulders and tight hands and the tension that had framed him up made the sheer size and build of him more obvious in the subtly layered clothing.

She wasn't stupid.

He was stalking the hell out of her, putting her on his radar and cornering, advancing her right back into the hall wall.

"I was talking to Snyder." He'd found his way far enough into her space that the defensive lift of her hands caught half up his chest, leading a smirk across his lips as she gripped on lapels. "Calling him back to DC."

"I don't care." Well, that was a complete lie. He was interested, at the very least. His eyes went fractioning a little farther closed before he let his breath pass through them slowly. "Not right now."

Kate fidgeted her tongue between her lips, working fingertips against the invitingly warm fabric of his overcoat. "Rough case?"

"It's done." He jerked it between them just as he stepped her hips back sharply into the wall, voice grazing lower in the way he exhaled the words. "Walk away."

"Yeah. Sure you do." She stepped her bare feet back a little from his leaning, straightening hard up into the wall as he noted the movement and forced his stance to settle a little. "Why - "

"Why do you feel the need to find an explanation for everything?" His fingers had found their way up her untucked shirt, stroking on her stomach as he squinted her a mildly accusatory glance.

"Pot and kettle, sir." She felt the response go weaker than she meant, especially when he let his lips drop along her jaw. "You just spent days searching for explanations."

"Don't call me 'sir', Kate." The whisper of it just in front of her ear brought her hands tightly up into the center of his chest, reflexively digging him closer by his jacket. "Not unless I tell you to."

She moaned a sound off her throat before blindly turning into the kiss he was patiently offering, hands fisted tight into his coat as he laughed into her lips. Kate growled annoyance into the laughter, slicking her tongue against his as she pulled harder against the fabric, keeping him close as his hands went from waist to hips and back up under her shirt to skate her ribs.

"Ask me to stay." The order was wiped into her lips and she shoved playfully into his chest.

"I didn't ask you to come."

"Yes, you have." His fingers were deftly dropping buttons open down the front of her shirt, turning the fabric into giving way as he leaned his hand slowly down her chest. "Way I remember it, you even said 'please'."

She wasn't sure if the moan came off her lungs because he had a tricky little way of lending his voice to verging dirty or if it was because he'd slid his fingertips back up and under the front of her bra, using it to tug her closer.

Kate caught the way he watched her, noticed how intently he was studying her reaction to each movement made before she loosened her hands against his jacket. "Gibbs, you don't need an invitation."

He seemed to flinch into the realization that she had known why he'd paused.

That she was giving him a green light that he hadn't necessarily realized he'd been waiting for.

"I don't?" His jaw lifted into the question sharply, eyes still dropped over her as he wiped along her stomach, shirt nudged out of his way.

"No." She let her fingers lift a brushing on his lips regardless of how closely to too intimate it may have seemed. "You don't."

It was the first full smile he'd given her in days and it made him seem so much younger than his tired eyes said he was. "Theoretically, I could just lay you up against this wall and - "

"At this point, I'd be seriously disappointed if that was just a theory." Kate tugged against his jaw on a sharp nodding, her head leaning closer to his as his rushed smile went downward. His eyes followed his own movements as he lifted his hand to curve under one of her breasts. His thumb was making repeated circling passes against her nipple, rasping the fabric against it as he let a groan throttle off his lungs. "How many ways can I make you blush tonight, Todd?"

"It's two am." Her voice matched the musing of his. "Let's just stick to the top of the list for now, huh?"

He grinned to himself, let it shrug on him before the brightened up blue of his eyes met hers and he blinked. "Okay, but halfway down is where I get really creative."

She knew laughing would give him the space he wanted to lean his mouth closer down her neck but she gave it to him, let it come off her lips as he sucked against the curve toward her shoulder.

"Something to look forward to, Gunny." She was letting her fingers tangle through fabric, moving past each stretch of fabric to ridge her fingertips on his collarbone. "Do you really need this many layers?"

"Complaints?"

She let her eyes search over his shoulders and along his shirt collar and back along his face. "Only in the interest of saving time."

"I plan to, Todd." Laughter ran his voice, comfortable and teasing as he wiped a kiss up the shell of her ear and he felt the shiver run down the length of her. "Relax."

She huffed annoyance into his shoulder, eyes closing into the way he was rubbing fingertips against her scalp as his other hand worked against his belt. "I can't."

"I know that." He chuckled into her ear, the hot breathiness making her skin tingle up taut just before he cupped one palm against the back of her head and caught her fingers with the other, drawing her hand between them. "So distract yourself. Resolve this issue for me, krasavitsa."

The shift of both his hands to her head leaned into how quickly she took the sweetened hint, her fingers hurried against his button and zipper while he lifted her mouth to his. The roughness of the kiss he laid over her while breaking her spine and shoulders into the wall - it was the clearest sign he could have made that he wasn't in the mood to wait. Both his hands dug tightly into her hair, kept her head exactly where he wanted it as he strafed groaning kisses down her throat and shifted his hips forward into the way she'd already gotten him mostly freed from his pants. His teeth nicked against her skin when she wrapped her fingers around him and lightly stroked him closer.

The sound that came off his lungs was more affectionately appreciative and pleased than she'd expected, his fingers rubbing heat in her hair. "Kate."

"Don't you dare assume you're the only one who can tease, Gibbs."

"I don't." He jerkily shook his head as he loosened his fingers from her hair, palms sloping down the sides of her so that he could find the catch of her skirt.

"In a hurry now, huh?" She dropped it between them, letting his hands stroke on the top hem, flicking against the hook and zipper before hushing it off her hips so that he could find her underwear with insistent fingers.

He snorted at her accusation after a moment, skimming dampened fabric from between her thighs as he lifted her a smugly made and victorious smile. "You started it."

She really wasn't sure anymore who'd actually started anything between them. She was pretty sure it had something to do with the way he'd kept looking at her in the closed quarters of an airplane, though. Like she was something he wanted to watch for an undetermined amount of time.

Tony had been right. Terrifyingly so.

She turned her head over him as she tightened the tracing of her fingers, closing her palm "No, I didn't."

"Kate." It was a warning, but not necessarily a serious one. It was his _almost_ warning. The one that preceded the complete loss of patience – and he'd already been saintly patient and intentionally distant for days.

It was all at once her favorite sort of warning and she'd noticed how rough his voice had gotten. She tilted her head back into the wall while she pulled him closer and teased the tip of his length along her clit, lazily sinking her eyes closed. And she could feel him so intently watching her as she shifted her shoulders back and let him pull her left leg up, slicking him tighter as she shifted her hips into his.

"Caitlin." And that was the second warning shot. The hand that was gliding up the wall beside her flexed before he thwapped against it then impatiently dropped his palms against her hips to rough her closer.

"Feeling strong tonight?" She dropped her head to kiss it across his mouth.

"For you? Absolutely." His hands were the strongest part of him as he urged both her legs up onto his hips, palms curving under her as he laid his mouth open along her shoulder. "C'mere, beautiful."

She made a noise of disagreement against his temple as her arms curled on his shoulders and her fingers silked the back of his head, "I like it the other way. Say it - "

"Not sure you deserve it yet." He shook his head against her with a smile. "Tease."

* * *

"That'd look better in my shirt." His head went angling long to the right, focusing on the back of her and where the edge of her shirt curved just under her ass as she stretched up against the counter."Although..."

"Mmm hmmm. That's what I thought." She turned her head back toward him with a grin, palms levering against the counter. "Come make your six foot self useful."

"What could you possibly need outta there right now?"

His voice had verged playfully accusatory but he pressed up from the kitchen chair he'd been relaxed into. He stepped into stretching his back out, ignoring the crackling that racketed down his spine (not to mention his left knee) as he leaned into the back of her. Both hands caged her hips back as he stretched his chest forward and leaned his head over her shoulder. A small, sleepy and dazed smile curled on her as she turned her head into his leaning. The entire upper half of her pleasantly snugged against him in a way that said she'd just been finding a reason to tuck him around her.

Except for the fact her ass was driving his still undone belt buckle into his upper thigh, he had no complaints.

Strike that – he had no complaints about her ass, either. Not a one.

She just motioned wordlessly to the highest shelf above the sink, leaning back into the left side of his chest as he clipped it open. He grunted out a bemused noise as she slacked her entire weight between him and the counter, her face turning into his so that she could wipe her lips on his skin.

Christ, she smelled good. Like lavender and almonds and heat and him.

There was very little in the world that smelled as good as a woman who smelled like the man who wanted her close and safe. The realization of how very secure he wanted to keep her had him curving tighter around her smaller shoulders.

He knew 'close' and 'safe' were extraordinarily limited options to them, especially in combination.

He'd take advantage of it while possible.

"No bourbon." Kate murmured and aimed her hand up, letting him flick her fingers away with a light slap so that he could reach the bottle she'd been aiming for. "But I keep a bottle of Lagavulin here for my father."

"Top shelf, Secret Service." He brought the scotch bottle down, curving it around in one palm so he could read over the label while the other hand slid flat along the front of her. His fingers spanned out against her stomach, keeping her tightly pressed back into him while his thumb found skin in the open slack of the mussed shirt. "Expensive taste?"

"It's what he likes." She was obviously more interested in nudging her face right into his neck than defending his teasing accusation, her breathing sleeked far more even than it had been ealier. "You want it or not?"

She was completely ungaurded to him physically and it surprised the hell out of him. All the twitchy nervousness had edged out of her somewhere – probably right around when she'd gone exhaustedly laxed against his chest and whimpered a pleased little sound into his throat. She was just sated and indescribably warm into the span of his chest. It was startlingly comfortable enough that he figured one drink would probably just flare hot on him rather than soothe.

"I don't need it, Kate." The bottle thunked into the counter with a solid echo before he curved the other arm against her waist, tugging her up tighter as he turned his head into her hair. "I need sleep and so do you."

Her hands closed reflexively along his arms, digging him still as she clasped on him. "Stay."

He smiled against her, the sound of her voice both nervy and haughty at once. Bold and unsure.

"Planned to." He figured he probably shouldn't have left such an intimately made kiss in her hair but it had been an unconscious movement. "You told me I didn't need an invitation."

"You don't." The impatient cut in her tone said that she felt as though she'd said it enough and he nodded another kiss in her hair because he'd already noticed how much it tended to soften her down.

Gibbs just tugged into the fabric of her half undone shirt, forcing her forward as he put space between them with gentled hands. "My front door's unlocked."

"What?"

"I'm saying, I don't lock my front door." He explained succintly as he picked up the bottle, angling it back onto the shelf and tapping the door shut as she watched him from the side.

Her eyes blinked down him before her brow arched, the rising darkness of her glance making her seem twice as tired. "And I still can't decide if that's ridiculously cocky or just plain stupid."

"I'm saying - "

"I know." The nod on her was as sure as the way she clasped her fingers up in his shirt from beside him, her head turning slowly to watch him face her. "What are we doing, Gibbs?"

A lift of his shoulders and a completely guiltless smirk. "Sleeping together. Literally."

He could dupe a jury with that goddamn smile.

Her fingers tucked up in the fabric of his button down, jerking on it to stall his delfection. "I mean in more general terms than - "

"Caitlin." She was treading on his patience (and his impatience?) and she caught it in the flexed working of his jaw, his hand catching on her wrist and tucking it along the center line of his chest. "Just come to bed."

She tried not to smile into how quickly she'd gotten the rise of his shoulders back up, her glance dipping along the slight slant of them before she looked back up into his scrutiny. "That an order or an invitation?"

"It's a request." He murmured with breathed out patience, blocking his own smile as he noticed how near to her lips hers was. "Please?"

"Saying 'please' isn't always gonna work, Gibbs." She shook him a feigned glare as he tugged at her hand, laying his mouth into the center of her palm as he started backwards steps to the doorway.

That same devastating grin made her shoulders dip forward as he drew her with him. "It has so far."


End file.
